Although the cloud is becoming more and more of a household name, it still hasn’t been fully embraced by the majority of large companies, due to a low level of available security. The original idea behind the cloud was to make the power used to run large amounts of computers cheaper, more of a standard like electricity from a national grid. Unfortunately, though cloud-computing is on it’s way to becoming more cost effective, most companies are still relying on standard network cabling systems to get the job done. But technicians beware, new companies like Nicira are coming out with superior software that may change the future of cabling.

Amazon and other companies have churned out some great money saving cloud services, but many large corporations have decided to stay true to their own computer networks and resources. This can be seen as the equivalent of a house owner deciding to only use a generator for electricity, rather than rely on a a touch and go standard power system. The reason behind this is security issues — the way the network is built allows for easy reconfiguration, and makes the cloud shaky and less reliable. And providers who offer cloud computing services often run a whole data center on a single shared network. For example, if the large companies of Soda and Pop decided to both use one public cloud service, though all data storage is separate, they could be sharing the same network connection. This means that anyone who hacks into Soda’s data can quickly gain access to Pop’s as well. In addition, any days with a lot of computer action on Pop’s network will make Soda’s data transfers slower.

Founded in 2007, Nicira, which means vigilant in Sanskrit, is on a mission to make cloud computing more accessible and push the Internet to be more powerful than before. Their first step towards this goal is with the Network Virtualization Platform. This piece of technology is definitely for data centers and other companies with large networks — the common laptop owner can have a very difficult time understanding what it does. To break it down slightly, when this software is applied to a date center, it is able to stop the applications and programs that are functioning on the servers from interacting with any other network hardware. After this has been accomplished, a virtual network will create connections for the applications to run data. Basically, it does a better job than the physical switches and routers and makes them less important.

This technology allows users of the cloud to have the power to securely store and transfer their data. An administrator could easily reprogram the network using Nicira’s Network Virtualization Platform and specify each application their own connection, separate from the rest of the internet. This means that Soda’s big day of data transfers will not affect Pop. This kind of freedom is highly coveted in the networking world, and other companies are striving to keep up with the changing industry.