As enterprises continue to shift toward the cloud in 2015, network virtualization startups  are seeing the market opportunity and popping up across the globe to offer a smooth transition.

The network virtualization startup Midokura, with offices in Tokyo, Barcelona and San Francisco, in February unveiled the latest release of its Midokura Enterprise MidoNet (MEM) solution designed for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds. The company said MEM offers enterprises an easy transition while bridging existing virtualization technologies, such as VMware's vSphere, with cloud orchestration solutions like OpenStack.

In a recent interview with IT Best of Breed, Adam Johnson, founding member and VP of business at Midokura, explained the trends, revenue opportunities for VARs and where virtualization is leading the network industry.

What do see you as the biggest trends in network virtualization right now?

One of the biggest trends is rapid application delivery by the lines of businesses. This trend is severely hampered by an arcane architecture designed a decade ago under different requirements. Corporate networks were locked down and there was no notion of anytime access, from anywhere on any device. Wireless connectivity was not yet pervasive, real time video was smoke and mirrors.

The other trend is the phenomenal growth of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies. ISV World estimates that there are 22,000 SaaS companies globally. SaaS companies are born on the web, their developers designed their applications on shared nothing architecture and expect agility and failure to happen in every layer of the infrastructure including networking.

How big an impact will network virtualization play in the market this year?

We believe that network virtualization will have a big play this year. With the explosion of Big Data and Software-as-a Service (SaaS) companies coming onto the market, any webscale company spending north of $25,000 per month on public cloud infrastructure will seriously contemplate on-premise, private cloud options, especially for (development testing).

Networking remains an operational challenge and network virtualization is the only viable solution to address the issues around physical networks that weren’t designed for agility or scale.
Where and how can solution providers and VARs capitalize on the Infrastructure-as-a-Service clouds market?

Solutions providers and VARs with prior experience managing infrastructure services are likely to capitalize on the IaaS cloud. It is a relative straightforward business extension to add turnkey self-service offerings, perhaps from a branded customer portal for the customers who are looking for the pay-as-you go model rather than committing to a monthly or annual service ntract.