Bill Long, Equinix, and Sanjay Uppal, SVP & GM of VMware, join Stu Miniman for coverage of VMworld 2020. #VMworld #theCUBE #Equinix @SiliconANGLE theCUBE @VMware @equinixvideos https://siliconangle.com/2020/09/30/qa-vmware-velocloud-equinix-virtualize-network-edge-vmworld/ Q&A: VMware VeloCloud and Equinix virtualize the network edge BY DIEGO ASTURIAS Equinix is one of the primary meeting points for cloud providers, ISPs, MPLS providers, end users and more. One of the most interesting Equinix offerings is its Performance Hubs, which allows organizations to bring hardware resources to the network edge, extending their networks into the Equinix’s IBX data centers to be closer to the end user. The edge network that Equinix provides not only lowers latency to the end user, but also offers improved performance for cloud-delivered SD-WAN providers like VeloCloud, according to Bill Long (pictured, left), senior vice president of product management at Equinix Inc. Now, VMware’s VeloCloud, with its state-of-the-art SD-WAN solution, is capable of connecting Equinix’s Performance Hubs together so end users will have the same reliability and speed as if they were physically in the same private network. Long and Sanjay Uppal (pictured, right), senior vice president and general manager of the VeloCloud Business Unit at VMware Inc., spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during VMworld. They discussed the VMware and Equinix partnership, VeloCloud architecture, Secure Access Service Edge, Project Monterey, and Equinix’s Packet, a leading bare metal automation platform. (* Disclosure below.) [Editor’s note: The following has been condensed for clarity.] Bill, I want to start with that [VMware/Equinix] partnership. Long: So as people are moving more to a distributed hybrid multicloud type of architecture, they want to be able to get their infrastructure deployed out further, closer to their users. Previously, to do that they had to actually physically deploy the hardware. So the exciting partnership with VMware is what we’re doing with VeloCloud, where you can actually deploy the SD-WAN infrastructure on a virtualized basis, spin up the VeloCloud infrastructure, and have your SD-WAN solution without actually having to ship physical equipment. So, Sanjay, I’d love to hear a little bit about the architecture of your service? Uppal: So the software-defined part of this right from the get-go for VeloCloud now at VMware was to make this [WAN infrastructure] really to be simple and automated. And how do you get simplicity and automation? Well, you take most of the complexity out. And the way that we took the complexity out was to collapse all of that hardware at the endpoint and make it one very simple, easy-to-deploy appliance. And then on the other end, the collocated entities, where we had our software-defined, WAN gateways, there was the physical infrastructure that was required, and Equinix has been a partner to get those gateways deployed at the SD-WAN points of presence. The great thing now is that you don’t have to deploy all that hardware at the hub endpoints. All you do is use Equinix’s network edge. You get our SD-WAN gateways, deploy them as software, and now you can also scale it. Does SD-WAN fit into those [hybrid multicloud] environments where we’re connecting clouds? Long: You have the hub, which might be like a branch office location, and the spoke, which would be the head office. So, what’s important is, you want that hub to be the place where most ISPs or internet service providers are, such that you’re aggregating that traffic efficiently locally. And then you want to make sure you’re getting that traffic over to a cloud as efficiently as possible. So in the locations where we have the VeloCloud gateway and the network edge solution, they’re all located together. So it’s a local place where the ISP networks terminate so you can originate that traffic from any kind of branch office location. You can then get it into the VeloCloud edge and then out to the cloud. ... Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld. (* Disclosure: Equinix Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Equinix nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)