VMware has become a founding sponsor of the Open Networking Research Center, a collaborative effort to explore software-defined networking (SDN) as the new networking paradigm for the cloud era.

"Networks today are becoming increasingly complex and difficult to manage for the modern cloud computing era," said Allwyn Sequeira, vice president and CTO, networking and security, VMware. "We are seeing a major transformation in the way networking is being re-architected and are excited to be a part of this industry effort to define the future of networking."

The Open Networking Research Center is charged with developing a comprehensive intellectual framework to make significant advancements in the fundamental science of networking and to develop and deploy SDN tools and platforms for research and education.

The Open Networking Research Center is a virtual center with three components: two networking research groups each located at Stanford University and UC Berkeley as well as an independent non-profit Open Networking Laboratory that intends to develop an open-source SDN infrastructure. VMware joins 11 other companies in this effort to reinvent the current state of networking.

"The goal of the Open Networking Research Center is to enable the larger networking industry to build networks that offer sophisticated functionality that is affordable and simpler to manage than current networks," said Guru Parulkar, executive director of the Open Networking Research Center and consulting professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University.