Ask President Masakiyo Kodate of F5...
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Ask President Masakiyo Kodate of F5 Networks, what makes IT infrastructure differentiating in the SDx era?
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Ask President Masakiyo Kodate of F5 Networks, what makes IT infrastructure differentiating in the SDx era?
With the progress of cloud and virtualization, the commoditization of IT infrastructure is progressing rapidly. Will corporate IT also be swallowed by cloud services from giant IT vendors such as Amazon (AWS), Google, and Microsoft? How can IT departments and IT vendors provide valuable IT? We spoke with Mr. Masakiyo Kodate, the new president of F5 Networks Japan, who advocates SDAS (Software-Defined Application Services) and emphasizes the importance of building IT infrastructure in an application-oriented manner.
Rapid commoditization of IT infrastructure
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Mr. Masakiyo Kodate was appointed as the new president of F5 Networks Japan (F5) in May 2015. Mr. Kodate has been in the business field for over 20 years at IBM Japan. After that, he oversaw the industrial sector at Microsoft. He moved to Red Hat four years ago and has been promoting the company's alliance business. The communication with President Kodate is as follows (interviewer is Shinji Matsuo, editorial department). ──I was appointed as the new president on May 1. Why was it F5? Mr. Kodate: Before joining the company, F5 had a strong image of being a load balancer (LB) maker, but now we are developing solutions that support application delivery (ADC), security, and cloud environments. In fact, I've already learned that 40% of sales are migrating to software and services. In addition, we are promoting "Software-Defined Application Services (SDAS)", and I was greatly sympathized with this idea. ──In terms of software definition (SDx: Software-Defined anything), there is SDN, but what is the difference between this and SDAS? In addition, SDN itself has the impression that NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) etc. precedes and lags behind in SDx. Why did you feel the potential of SDAS? Mr. Kodate: I have been involved in operating systems at Microsoft and Red Hat, but with the development of virtualization and the cloud, IT infrastructure is becoming more and more commoditized. As a result, organizations and companies that provide IT services have had to differentiate themselves at higher layers. SDN and NFV are more focused on L2-3 virtualization such as switches and routers, but SDAS is an approach from L4-7. In other words, the idea of how to control performance, availability, accessibility, and security from an application perspective. It is true that NFV precedes, but SDN is finally beginning to spread in earnest. We believe that SDAS will proceed in parallel with this trend, and I feel that there is great potential in this field. ── With the rise of the public cloud, there are more opportunities for servicers themselves to provide LB services, such as AWS ELB (Elastic Load Balancing). Will you compete with these companies? Mr. Kodate: Public clouds are expanding rapidly now, but in my personal opinion, private clouds will surely remain, including in mission-critical fields such as finance. Therefore, it will be a hybrid cloud or a mixture of various infrastructures and services. Currently, many F5 products are beginning to provide an environment that can be used not only in private clouds and on-premises, but also in public clouds. For example, for LB and security functions, we are going to make any Proxy work, and for services such as DDoS countermeasures, we provide it as "as a Service". Optimizing application performance and ensuring security is not an easy task in a mixed infrastructure. We feel that being able to provide it as a one-stop service is our greatest strength. [Next page] Answer to vendor lock-inLoad Balancer L4-7 Switch Genre Topics
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