Are you attending VMworld 2018 in Las Vegas, NV?  If so, I invite you to add Big Switch to your MUST SEE list of vendors.

With so many vendors exhibiting at VMworld, how do you know which booths to visit and who to get on your busy schedule?  One of the companies on VMblog's MUST SEE list this year is Big Switch.  The company provides data center switching, monitoring, visibility and security solutions for on-premises enterprise cloud, public cloud and multi-cloud environments that enable companies of all sizes to increase operational efficiency and business agility, while reducing networking costs.  I had a great time catching up with them at Dell EMC World this year, so I can't wait to see what they have at VMworld.

Read this exclusive pre-show interview between VMblog and Big Switch, to learn what they have planned for the upcoming VMworld 2018 event and why you need to visit their booth.

 

 

VMblog:  As a VMworld 2018 sponsor, how can people find you this year?

Big Switch:  Big Switch is in Booth #1622. We have a 10 x 20 booth, we're not the biggest, but we have about 20 members of Team BSN members who will be on-site at the booth and excited to talk to attendees about our partnership with VMware and how our joint solutions can help solve end user challenges.

VMblog:  Can you give readers a few reasons why your product or service is considered unique? 

Big Switch:  Adoption of software-defined data center (SDDC) technologies are accelerating as customers are realizing gains in agility and cost efficiencies, especially for private clouds. To further ease adoption, Big Switch and VMware have partnered, allowing data center administrators unprecedented network automation capabilities. This strategic relationship enables private clouds based on VMware products to deploy new applications and workflows automatically across physical and virtual networks thus bringing additional visibility and troubleshooting to VMware administrators.

The network layer has traditionally been the least agile part of data center infrastructure to design, configure and operate, especially when compared to compute infrastructure. Today's status quo of managing networks via a time consuming and brittle switch-by-switch operational paradigm using a complex CLI approach, holds back organizations from achieving the full potential of the VMware SDDC since the networking silo of the datacenter cannot keep pace with the speed of innovation demanded by the business.

Big Cloud Fabric-Enterprise Cloud is purpose-built to support SDDC and hybrid cloud environments. When coupled with open networking switches, the solution delivers significant CapEx savings, as well as an order of magnitude reduction in complexity and increased networking management efficiency.

VMblog:  Can you give VMblog readers a sneak peek as to what you will be showing off at your booth this year?  What should attendees expect to see and hear at your booth?

Big Switch:  This year we are doing away with our usual mini presentation theater, and instead we have created a custom, interactive, and very fun game!

We will also have some fantastic demos that showcase the solutions: Big Cloud Fabric-Enterprise Cloud (BCF-EC) integration with VMware's NSX-T and vSAN, as well as integration with vSphere 6.7 for both BCF-EC and Big Monitoring Fabric-Enterprise Cloud (BMF-EC). The company will also be demoing ERSpan and SPAN traffic steering with BMF-EC via a one-click GUI.

And, for every badge we scan at our booth, we will donate $1 to St. Jude's Children's Research.

VMblog:  How does your company and product fit within the VMware ecosystem?

Big Switch:  Big Switch's CFN portfolio is the ideal physical network underlay for the VMware SDDC. The CFN portfolio includes: Big Cloud Fabric-Enterprise Cloud for data center switching, Big Monitoring Fabric-Enterprise Cloud for network analytics and monitoring, and Multi-Cloud Director, for consistent management and operations across on-prem, public-cloud and across on-prem/in-cloud combinations of networking and monitoring fabrics. Our CFN portfolio offers best-in-class economics, automation, visibility and cross-cloud administration with VMware's SDDC portfolio, via seamless integration with: VMware vSphere, VMware NSX, VMware vSAN, VMware Horizon, VMware vCloud NFV, VMware Integrated OpenStack, and VMware vSphere Integrated Containers.

VMblog:  How many times have you sponsored VMworld before?  And what keeps you coming back?

Big Switch:  This is our fifth year sponsoring VMworld. We have a fantastic partnership with VMware, with a great portfolio of products that are ideal for the VMware SDDC, and tons of customers that have already deployed the joint solutions.

VMblog:  Finally, attendees always enjoy a good trade show tchotchke.  Are you guys giving away anything special or interesting this year?

Big Switch:  We have a very awesome game at our booth and every attendee who plays wins a prize. We are giving away gift cards, socks, stickers and t-shirts.

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