Hardware used to be the foundation of IT. You couldn’t deploy an application without configuring dozens of servers and hardware appliances. But modern enterprises can’t be held back by a walls of knobs any longer. Proprietary physical hardware is expensive, slow, and works counter to your digital transformation.
Today, virtualization and cloud environments have loosened hardware’s grasp on infrastructure by commoditizing or outsourcing hardware considerations. These trends have been chipping away at hardware control in the data center for years. The recent VMware and Amazon Web Services (AWS) partner solution is an example of a technology that has abstracted away hardware dependency so your workloads can move from your data center to a cloud with ease.
Even though there have been significant software-defined advancements, the majority of enterprise applications still reside in the data center—and hardware appliances are a major culprit. Legacy appliances, like hardware load balancers, make up for their shortcomings with robust controls and security features. Cloud native load balancers generally compete on automation, elasticity, and price; however, most aren’t willing to turn a blind eye on security for performance or cost savings.
Earlier this week, Zeus Keravalla, founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, presented research on this topic through a webinar (recording available) where he shared findings on the difficulties these legacy appliances create. The research findings were also released in a white paper entitled “Legacy Hardware-Based ADCs Are Holding Companies Back”.
This is a problem felt by many enterprises. How do you combine the features of the hardware appliances with the speed and performance of cloud native solutions? In other words, how do you have your cake and eat it too? This is a problem Avi Networks has solved.
Avi Networks is a next-generation application delivery platform. Okay, okay... in plain English it means that it is a 100% software solution that gives you the pros of both the hardware and cloud native solutions without the cons of either. If this sounds too good to be true, you’re probably an IT professional who is experiencing a pain we can solve (let’s talk!). If this doesn’t sound too good to be true, you probably don’t work in IT (Mom?). It’s the equivalent of having a 0 calorie fudge brownie. It’s that awesome but, you know, in IT.
The Avi Vantage Platform includes a Smart Load Balancer, Intelligent Web Application Firewall, and Elastic Service Mesh—all which use an analytics engine that provides visibility into your end-users, applications, and infrastructure. The platform runs on bare metal, virtual machines, and containers so it truly is a universal solution for use cases across all environments.
By removing dependencies on on hardware appliances, enterprises can maximize their investments in the data center and the cloud. Consistency across and portability between these environments requires software solutions (which is why Avi Networks is the application delivery partner for VMware Cloud on AWS).
Enterprises need more from the data center and the cloud. And hardware appliances, like legacy load balancers, stand in the way. 2018 is the year of #NoHardware. Digital transformation will accelerate as enterprises migrate more applications to the cloud (or bring cloud-like agility to the data center). This can only be accomplished with software. And Avi Networks is excited to be your partner on your #NoHardware journey.
