With vmware's acquisition of Nicira, the era of network virtualization through Software Defined Networking has entered the mainstream. It won't be too long before the days of complex proprietary hardware are gone for good. Configuring and managing individual boxes using a rigid set of pre-defined semantics will soon be over.
Moreover, with vmware owning the NVP solution, Cisco's VxLAN will be stillborn and the Nexus 1000v will soon be altogether irreleveant and vmware will own the data center.
Cisco, Juniper and HP are all in trouble - big time.
