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How did the investment in VMware come about?
“I was involved in hiring Mendel Rosenblum, one of the founders of VMware, at Stanford. Sometimes I pick good people,” he smiles. “Mendel was a good pick for a faculty member. I got to know his wife Dianne because both of us windsurfed. She’s better than I am. It was kind of curious. I’m glad that I stayed friends with Mendel because I’d take off with his wife into the San Francisco Bay and he was kind of left behind. At any rate we got to know each other well.”
“IBM developed virtual machines in the 1970s. This was to allow two riders on the same dinosaur – that is, two operating systems running on the same big dinosaur (IBM 370s). So that was that and didn’t go very far. When VMware was founded one of the things that I realised in talking to people in the industry was the practice had involved that you ran Windows as a single application operating system because what people found is if you put two applications on Windows they usually get in each other’s way and are far less reliable. So basically what virtual machines became is the ability to run a whole bunch of Window instances on the same server without relying on the operating system to keep the applications out of each other’s hair or destabilising Windows.
“Now in the research context there was this notion of developing what was called a microkernel – a much smaller, very effective core piece of the operating system to improve reliability. This was what I considered the Holy Grail. I had worked on this for years. Mendel came along and reinvigorated the whole virtual machine thing. I suddenly realised that I was missing the right approach to this microkernel approach, which is to make it a true virtual machine compatible at the level you could run Windows. Of course the rest
“
Networking is like a Lego kit except there’s no instructions on how to put it together
is history. So this is putting together my research adding my friends and realising the technology was proven but just hadn’t been directed at this particular need.
“I had a PhD student, Depang Zhou, who wanted to start a company. I debated whether I wanted to do yet another start-up here. But I agreed to help him and provide some funding because it was kind of an interesting software challenge. I went back to Andy like I’d done with Google. I guess he thought that when I asked him about Google that worked out pretty well. So, he agreed to put in some funds with this start-up. Then a couple of my former students who are incredible software people, Ken Duda and Hugh Holbrook, had agreed to join. Mansour Karam joined us as well. We had this great team charging along. The trouble was we gradually realised we had a great team but the wrong product. There was no market for this. I often think that this points the way that there’s a lot of opportunities come along, sometimes it’s harder to put together the team. It’s important to not get too religious about what you thought you were going to build.
“So we had to pivot on this. I think a lot of the pivot was really orchestrated by Andy Bechtolsheim to recognise that 10 gigabit Ethernet was really happening in the big data centres and that cloud computing was taking off, so there was a need for a next-generation switch. So the David – our smallest networking company in the world – took on Cisco, the Goliath, in the cloud data centre. While they were off buying things like flip cameras and so on we were aimed at the area that was growing the most rapidly with the highest margins and also benefited from the fact that Cisco had put a very high premium on 10 gigabit Ethernet to protect the lower speed products in their line, whereas we didn’t have any lower speed products. They in effect created what Andy likes to call a price umbrella over us so we could come in here and they had difficulty competing.”
At that point, was he ready to take a break? “Yes. When I got out of Arista I was planning to go back to academia. This Apstra opportunity came along. It was essentially yet another network automation company, because people had tried to do this sort of network automation before. One of the things I find fascinating about networking is it’s down in the plumbing. It’s simple enough in its basic principle to explain to your parents. But it’s surprisingly complicated when you actually look at all the bells, whistles, features and all the things that people do plus the complex dynamics that take place there.
“So I was trying to go back to academia and then I started talking to Mansour and Sasha about this in tackling the biggest problem I see in networking. Everyone’s been aware of this problem for many, many years, which is how do you run a network as a system as opposed to a collection of boxes? The typical networking company is really a switch company that Cisco or Arista or so on will sell you a box, another box and another box and then sell you a bunch of cables. Then you have to put it all together. So it’s like buying a Lego kit except there’s no instructions on how to put it together. You have your own preference as to what you want to build. Or it’s like you want to have a new home and what shows up is a bunch of bricks
www.ibsintelligence.com | © IBS Intelligence 2018
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