June 23, 2011 — OpenFlow was definitely one of the hottest topics at GigaOM’s Structure conference this year, and everyone was talking about ways to improve networking for the cloud. But why does the cloud even need new networking technology? Hasn’t networking been solved many years ago? Joyent Co-founder and Chief Scientist Jason Hoffmann intentionally raised some very basic questions at the beginning of his panel about virtualized networks.
After all, he knew he was talking to some folks who knew the answers from working in the trenches: Big Switch Networks Co-Founder and CEO Guido Appenzeller said that networking hasn’t kept up with the innovation we’ve seen in the area of server virtualization. Enterprises now need half an hour to deploy a new server, he explained. Reconfiguring the network, on the other hand, takes an employee two days. Read More
