VMWare to virtualise network next

Duncan Bennet, managing director, VMWare in Melbourne. Photo: Patrick Scala

Cloud computing is growing at an incredible pace in Australia, but, if not careful, companies risk adding unnecessary complexity to their IT systems.

That is the view of VMWare managing director for Australia and New Zealand Duncan Bennet who is counting on his company's potential to simplify the cloud for companies thinking about moving there in the new year.

Mr Bennet told Fairfax Media organisations seeking to extract value from moving their IT systems to the cloud, must "be careful, otherwise they are potentially increasing management overhead" as they adopt myriad management systems from multiple suppliers.

The company that made virtualisation possible is now moving to virtualise networks, so when applications are moved from one data centre to another, or to the public cloud, they can continue to talk to the internet in the same way they were previously configured.

Last month VMWare announced it would offer a version of its private cloud technology, VCloud Air, through Telstra's data centres from next year.

"It's based on exactly the same technology as they already use in-house. We're giving them a choice," Mr Bennet said.

The company will now turn its attention to virtualisation of networks and is already courting government agencies, mining companies, banking and finance, telecommunications and tertiary institutions. Macquarie Telecom will be the first to put the NSX, network virtualisation product, into production.

"We virtualised servers, we think there's a tremendous opportunity to do the same to the network hardware and software," Mr Bennet said.

Dan McLean, director cloud, for VMWare Australia New Zealand, said as companies try to move their applications from their own data centres into a service provider, the complexity of how each app talks to the internet is the most difficult part of the move.

"Now they can allow the network to move with that virtual machine. The network configurator will ship with the machine and will talk to the internet in the same ways it was configured [before]," Mr McLean said.

Although he declined to reveal revenue targets, Mr Bennet said VMWare has seen growth in excess of 100 per cent a year around the globe on the back of cloud computing. It already had its wares in more than 200 private cloud providers in Australia, including Fujitsu and Macquarie Telecom, prior to the Telstra public cloud deal.

That large network of resellers would ensure a rapid take-up, he said.

Australian businesses and government agencies have been spoilt for choice in the current cloud market. 

Besides Australian facilities by US providers Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Rackspace, there's now also Microsoft's Australian Azure, IBM's SoftLayer, Fujitsu and Macquarie Telecom among others, while the federal government will be served its own trio of dedicated clouds from Telstra, DiData and SAP.

Forecaster IDC estimates companies already in the cloud expect to spend 53.7 per cent of their IT budget on cloud-based applications and services by early 2016.

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