Vinod Khosla talks about entrepreneurs having a deep understanding of an area instead of surface knowledge to make a difference. I guess, Nicira is one such example where deep technical know-how of founders helped them disrupt the networking industry with ground-breaking innovation.
Congrats on many levels! Nicara=1.3 times Instagram but several magnitudes greater than Instagram, when it came to solving hard-technical problems. I know, it is a dubious comparison but I am biased towards entrepenuers/founders who solve hard-technical problems. I am pretty sure, someone will argue that Instagram was pushing the boundaries of sharing, and in some fuzzy/meta way improving the human condition and experience in non-tangible ways, and in the process will end-up solving hard-technical problems (scale, data-science blah-blah). Let us just say, I disagree. Expecting to be voted down to oblivion.
On the other hand, infrastructure can only be as useful as the applications they support. Technologists love solving hard technical problems [1], but ultimately, isn't the main goal to improve peoples' lives? Almost all the engineers I know would prefer to work on sophisticated interesting problems than "another web-app," but there isn't much point if it is just for our own edification.
I can understand your disdain for Instagram's frivolity, but people said the same about Twitter and it ended up playing a major role in the Arab Spring, whereas almost no one outside the techworld knows or really cares who runs their infrastructure. Of course without this infrastructure it all wouldn't work.
Like you say, comparing the two is like comparing apples to oranges, you can't really argue one is fundamentally more important than the other.
Also, Nicira was contributing a lot to Openstack networking, at least as of the Diablo release, in the Quantum plugin and I believe in nova-network in general. That will have repercussions for HP, Dell, Rackspace, or anyone else heavily invested in Openstack.
I had the pleasure of working on a small project in which Nicira was involved. I didn't work directly with them, but they seemed really sharp. Many congratulations to them on a great exit.
I think VMware has made it fairly clear for a while that any part of the stack they touch will belong to them if they want it to. Even storage, which must make EMCers nervous.
Several people predicted that Nicira is a feature and the VMware of networking will be VMware; those turned out to be true, although in a different way than predicted.
Nicely done, nicely done. Got to love it when someone takes a real problem and nails the solution. When I first read about these guys (as an operations person myself) I thought, "Ya know, if they can make this work they will have a helluva solution."
I'm not very savvy on what goes on with large scale networks and whatever market Nicira is in, but this blog post tells me extremely little beyond giving everybody high-fives.
What problem is Nicira solving, exactly? (It's certainly possible that the problem-space is too advanced to really tell it in layman's terms, but I can't even tell if that's the case here).
Is it really possible to be independent (not bought out) while being successful and in business when your area of operation (virtualization in this case), closely overlaps with that of another much bigger, wealthier company (VMware in this case) ?
I like the Steve Jobs quote where he says he doesn't like companies whose sole goal is to eventually get bought out by a bigger player. I personally would like to build a company, cultivate culture within that company and stay independent, even if that means more competition and less cash-in-hand in the short run.
They say the only requirement from physical network is IP connectivity. Technically it's straightforward to build a virtual machine on top of IP.
The real matter is to see that IP virtualization is the future of networking. However, I'm suspicious on the efficiency of that kind of virtualization as it might consume more CPU energy and maybe cause some lags between networks.
[+] [-] simplekoala|13 years ago|reply
Congrats on many levels! Nicara=1.3 times Instagram but several magnitudes greater than Instagram, when it came to solving hard-technical problems. I know, it is a dubious comparison but I am biased towards entrepenuers/founders who solve hard-technical problems. I am pretty sure, someone will argue that Instagram was pushing the boundaries of sharing, and in some fuzzy/meta way improving the human condition and experience in non-tangible ways, and in the process will end-up solving hard-technical problems (scale, data-science blah-blah). Let us just say, I disagree. Expecting to be voted down to oblivion.
[+] [-] jethroalias97|13 years ago|reply
I can understand your disdain for Instagram's frivolity, but people said the same about Twitter and it ended up playing a major role in the Arab Spring, whereas almost no one outside the techworld knows or really cares who runs their infrastructure. Of course without this infrastructure it all wouldn't work.
Like you say, comparing the two is like comparing apples to oranges, you can't really argue one is fundamentally more important than the other.
[1] http://jeffhuang.com/best_paper_awards.html
[+] [-] 3am|13 years ago|reply
Also, Nicira was contributing a lot to Openstack networking, at least as of the Diablo release, in the Quantum plugin and I believe in nova-network in general. That will have repercussions for HP, Dell, Rackspace, or anyone else heavily invested in Openstack.
I had the pleasure of working on a small project in which Nicira was involved. I didn't work directly with them, but they seemed really sharp. Many congratulations to them on a great exit.
[+] [-] wmf|13 years ago|reply
Several people predicted that Nicira is a feature and the VMware of networking will be VMware; those turned out to be true, although in a different way than predicted.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Splines|13 years ago|reply
What problem is Nicira solving, exactly? (It's certainly possible that the problem-space is too advanced to really tell it in layman's terms, but I can't even tell if that's the case here).
[+] [-] joelthelion|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wamatt|13 years ago|reply
Cost reduction is a major advantage, but also network flexibility and ease of setup are wins.
[+] [-] winter_blue|13 years ago|reply
I like the Steve Jobs quote where he says he doesn't like companies whose sole goal is to eventually get bought out by a bigger player. I personally would like to build a company, cultivate culture within that company and stay independent, even if that means more competition and less cash-in-hand in the short run.
[+] [-] wmf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aurora72|13 years ago|reply
The real matter is to see that IP virtualization is the future of networking. However, I'm suspicious on the efficiency of that kind of virtualization as it might consume more CPU energy and maybe cause some lags between networks.
[+] [-] wmf|13 years ago|reply