On-premises data centers, private and public clouds, software as a service applications, microservices, internet of things edge devices — there are so many parts to the modern information technology universe. How is a single company to get them all working together to juice out desired business outcomes? According to VMware Inc., it’s pretty much hopeless without new virtualized networking.

“How is a hybrid talking to each other? What’s the connective tissue?” asked David Shacochis (pictured, left), vice president of product management at CenturyLink Inc. “It’s a network that needs to be able to bond all those microservices or hybrid components together.”

These days it’s hard to spot the application or infrastructure configuration that isn’t hybrid, he added. To deliver smart networking solutions, CenturyLink has partnered with VMware and Amazon Web Services Inc. The former’s virtualization technology helps optimize multiple network paths that make complex hybrid systems work, Shacochis explained.

Shacochis and Greg Kaffenberger (pictured, right), cloud solution strategist at VMware Inc., spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the VMworld conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. They discussed networking’s crucial role in hybrid IT and CenturyLink’s latest service releases. (* Disclosure below.)

Fishing for value off the IoT edge

CenturyLink’s Cloud Connect service creates secure, private, dynamic and on-demand connections between different cloud execution venues, according to Shacochis.

“We have so much optionality as you move through our network, and we can really come up with route miles and route paths through the network that are self-healing and can react,” he said. “It’s vital when you’re creating that mesh of data of a composite application that’s maybe tying into a data service that they’re subscribing to in SaaS, tying into a data service that’s running on a legacy private cloud [etc.].”

Relationships between hybrid points are becoming more than technical. There is actual business value and other outcomes on the line now, Kaffenberger stated.

“That’s where these edge cases, where this edge computing, these IoT use cases that you’re talking about, they really turn into real dollars, environmental impact, all sorts of unintended consequences,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VMworld conference. (* Disclosure: CenturyLink Inc. sponsored this segment, with additional broadcast sponsorship from VMware Inc. CenturyLink, VMware, and other sponsors do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE