VMware to Acquire Avi Networks to deliver Public Cloud Experience to the Entire Data Center

VMware recently announced its intent to acquire Avi Networks.

Founded in 2012, San Francisco based Avi Networks pioneered a software-defined delivery architecture. Their Avi Vantage platform helps deliver multi-cloud application services such as load balancing, application security, autoscaling, container networking, and web application firewall. Avi automates application delivery, ensuring applications are available, secure, and responsive. The company raised around USD $115 Million in four investment rounds, according to CrunchBase.

VMware wants to bring agility to developers in deploying their workloads with the same public cloud experience to the entire Data Centre, notes the announcement.

Executive Opinion

Senior vice president and general manager, networking and security business unit, VMware, Tom Gillis, "VMware is committed to making the data centre operate as simply and easily as it does in the public cloud, and the addition of Avi Networks to the growing VMware networking and security portfolio will bring us one step closer to this goal after the acquisition closes. This acquisition will further advance our Virtual Cloud Network vision, where a software-defined distributed network architecture spans all infrastructure and ties all pieces together with the automation and programmability found in the public cloud. Combining Avi Networks with VMware NSX will further enable organizations to respond to new opportunities and threats, create new business models, and deliver services to all applications and data, wherever they are located."

Chief executive officer, Avi Networks, Amit Pandey, said, "Unlike existing ADC solutions, Avi Networks’ distributed ADC is designed for modern data centre and public cloud deployments, with an architecture that mirrors cloud principles. Upon close, customers will be able to benefit from a full set of software-defined L2-7 application networking and security services, on-demand elasticity, real-time insights, simplified troubleshooting, and developer self-service."

The Avi Networks' acquisition

Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) are an important architectural piece in the software-defined data centre. Avi Networks does not require any appliances for ADC. The platform is built with REST APIs and plugins. Thus it can be consumed on-prem, in public clouds, or as a service, enabling new flexibility and faster time to value at lower costs. REST APIs enable integration with CI/CD pipelines for application delivery, says the announcement.

Avi Networks already supports AWS, Azure, GCP, OpenStack, and VMware. The announcement listed Deutsche Bank, Adobe, Swisslos, EBSCO, ZOLL Data, Telegraph Media Group, and the University of Leipzig among others as their notable customers.

Once this acquisition completes, VMware and Avi Networks claim to deliver only software-defined networking stack from L2-7 built for the modern multi-cloud era, says the announcement.

The transaction is expected to close in VMware's fiscal Q2 FY2020.