Why the Cloud Needs a Network Decongestant

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Dan Woods.

Every part of the world of business computing is getting cloudier. By that I mean that computing resources are becoming virtual. Instead of running on a physical machine, our applications run on virtual machines, ones created by software and controlled by APIs. This is happening in data centers who are using VMware and other virtualization technologies to increase utilization and flexibility, and in public and private clouds created by the likes of Amazon and Rackspace that provide on-demand computing resources.

In the face of all of this hardware becoming software, It is easy to think that we can forget about the physical world. But this is not true, especially when it comes to the network layer. I recently started studying a company called Gnodal, which creates a new kind of Ethernet-based, ASIC-accelerated switch that can dynamically optimize the flow of network traffic. Learning about this technology has convinced me that more and more companies are going to face a large bump in the road as their infrastructure becomes more virtual…

All Computing Is Eventually Physical

Remember, no matter what, at some point, all computing becomes physical. For anything to happen, at some point, a CPU has to load instructions and process data. That data has to arrive at the computer containing the CPU, be processed, and then be sent somewhere, often to another computer. A physical network that connects many computers together must come into play. It is in the switching layer that the bump in the road will appear as the world becomes more virtual. Here’s how it will play out:…

Read more from the source @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2012/10/25/why-the-cloud-needs-a-network-decongestant/