August 13, 2003 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- As the widespread adoption of virtualization technology picks up speed in data centers around the world, virtualization technology vendors are striving to establish themselves not just as significant players in the marketplace, but also as significant contributors to the development of the technology itself.
Inkra Networks (Inkra.com), which develops technology for delivering virtualized IP services, appears to have firmly established itself in both of those roles, announcing this week that its Virtual Service Switch (VSS) technology had been chosen to help power the "agile infrastructure" architecture of IT outsourcing giant EDS (EDS.com).
Just nine months after announcing a similar deal with IBM, Inkra said its Inkra 1500 and Inkra 4000 Virtual Service Switches would be incorporated into the EDS architecture to provide a range of virtualized security and IP services. The new deal places Inkra as a provider of an important component of the architectures of not just two of the largest IT outsourcers in the world, but also two of the most significant users of virtualization technology.
"From our perspective," says Dave Roberts, vice president of marketing at Inkra Networks, "it's a great honor to have been selected by both companies. These are two of the largest and most successful companies in this business, and both of them have evaluated Inkra very strenuously, so at the end of the day we feel great that they chose us."
EDS is a well-known advocate of virtualization technology, striking a long-term deal with data center automation technology company Opsware Inc. last year, when it purchased the commercial Web hosting business belonging to that company, formerly known as Loudcloud. Inkra's VSS technology will allow EDS to virtually distribute IP and security services—including firewall, VPN, SSL acceleration, intrusion detection and load balancing—through a series of "virtual racks" in an on-demand fashion.
The companies say EDS will begin by deploying the Inkra equipment in its Plano Service Management Center, with plans to expand the deployment into its Oklahoma and London centers.
"About a year ago we started looking at the whole virtualization space and trying to look at the technology providers that would provide what we felt were best of breed capabilities in each of these areas," says Robert Keahey, director of technology strategy at EDS. "Last summer we really started looking in earnest and engaged with Inkra in more of an in-depth analysis perspective. Last fall we did some on-site visits to look at their engineering strategy, architecture, company and so on."
In January of this year, EDS brought the Inkra equipment on-site and took it through a testing and analysis process that involved extensive performance and functionality testing. Now, says Keahey, EDS is prepared to begin incorporating the Inkra equipment into its service offerings.
"We are initially positioning it as a migration tool," he says, "for existing clients who want to take advantage of our new automated operations service offering. We have quite a few long-term relationships with clients who want to migrate to the new sets of services."
In the second stage, says Keahey, EDS will deploy the Inkra 1500s in a "compartmental strategy," where clients are provided with a large shared networking infrastructure at the aggregation and distribution layer, each with their own "logical compartment."
"In the third phase," he says, "we will be using the Inkra 4000s to actually provide a large-scale shared aggregation of IP services across multiple clients in multiple logical compartments. So its kind of a progression up the scale to the 4000, that we see will get the maximum return on investment out of that box."
For Inkra, the value of the deal obviously extends beyond reputation to an impressive potential for business, but also to an equally impressive potential for important contributions to the further development of its technology.
"EDS is a phenomenal customer for us," says Roberts, "not just from a name standpoint, but we've found them to be really enjoyable folks to work with and obviously the revenue potential with the scope and size of EDS is great for a company in Inkra's position. There's a lot of talk out there about virtualization and utility computing, and a lot of ideas that are being kicked around. EDS is really out building it, and that provides a powerful driver for innovation back to Inkra, because we're out building it too."
