There are about as many flavors of cloud computing as there are of software-defined networks, but Big Switch Networks Inc. only concerned itself with the frontrunners when developing the new iteration of its virtual connectivity platform that debuted this morning. The widened integration with VMware Inc.’s popular management software and OpenStack aims to blur the line between physical and virtual.

Most modern applications run at a higher level of abstraction than the underlying hardware, including the switches and routers handling their traffic, which requires overlaying a virtual network topography on top of the physical equipment to bridge the gap. That arrangement creates extra complexity that becomes far too much to handle by hand at the kind of scale in which the typical software-defined environment operates, a challenge that Big Cloud Fabric 3.0 aims to address.

The platform promises to consolidate the management of the physical and virtual planes behind a single pane of glass. For OpenStack clusters, the platform realizes that vision with a unified console for provisioning, troubleshooting and monitoring the entire networking stack. And in VMware deployments, administrators are now able to track their physical equipment from the same place as the virtual machines running above.

That multi-level visibility is afforded through a homegrown packet broker that inspects and filters traffic as it flows through the physical network to enable low-cost optimization. Operators can take advantage of that functionality to to remove redundant data for the sake of conserving bandwidth and remove anomalies to improve security, among other operations. The startup boasts that its technology works with everything up to and including the the ultra-fast 100G switches used by carriers

To expand the appeal of its value proposition even further, Big Switch is also announcing a new pricing model
in conjunction with the update under which customers can purchase more hardware than they initially need without paying extra usage requirements and slowly unlock more of the installation as requirements grow with time.

Photo via Big Switch Networks