As networking technology shifts to include infrastructure like the Kubernetes open-source container-orchestration system on cloud native or 5G cellular network technology, companies have an opportunity to reset their architecture. And thanks to evolving tech, networking as a concept has changed completely, according to Rajiv Ramaswami (pictured), chief operating officer of products and cloud services at VMware Inc.

“From a customer perspective, every one of them is going through this transformational journey depending on where they’re at,” Ramaswami said. “And there’s an opportunity at that time for them to fundamentally rearchitect how they deploy their infrastructure.”

Ramaswami spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the RADIO event in San Francisco. They discussed networking innovation through concepts like 5G, network slicing, and new network layers (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

5G networking, network slicing, and new networking layers

As an example of this massive shift, Ramaswami pointed out telephone companies that are going through their transformation. As telcos go through big capital investment cycles geared toward massive technology generation, 5G is evolving because the edge market is much more dynamic and programmable.

“It’s an opportunity … for them to go deploy a new infrastructure that is much more virtualized, much more using standard hardware, running everything in virtualized applications, virtualized network functions than they could before,” Ramaswami stated.

5G gives telephone companies an opportunity to try out many different business models — including a business model where multiple operators could be sharing the same radio. This is called “network slicing,” Ramaswami explained.

“[Network slicing is] the ability … to share the network. You deploy a single network infrastructure, and you’re able to slice that into chunks and have different people use those chunks,” he said.

Networking itself is a concept that has changed from its classical definition Years ago, it was a box mentality where it was all about connecting laptops and desktops into the network. But now? The network is everywhere.

“If you look at fundamentally what networking has evolved to now, it’s about connecting what? Connecting users, applications and data. And these could be anywhere,” Ramaswami said. “So, fundamentally, now the new networking layer has to be a layer of software that really delivers and connects and secures these applications, users and data.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the RADIO event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the VMware RADIO 2019 event. Neither VMware Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE