Who is Nicira?
Nicira is a Network Virtualization (NV) company that develops software-based networking and security platforms for cloud and virtualized data center environments.
- Software Defined Networking (SDN) platforms for virtualized and cloud infrastructure (networking)
- NV overlays that decouple logical networks from physical network hardware (networking)
- Distributed virtual switching and routing for multi-tenant environments (networking)
- Software-based network security and isolation for cloud and virtualized workloads (network security)
- Integration with virtualization and cloud management stacks for automated network provisioning (cloud management)
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More About Nicira
Nicira focuses on SDN and NV for enterprises and service providers that operate large-scale virtualized data centers and cloud environments. Its core approach is to abstract network services from the underlying physical infrastructure, allowing organizations to define, deploy, and manage logical networks in software while continuing to use existing network hardware. This model aligns with common enterprise strategies around server and storage virtualization and extends those concepts to networking.
The company’s technology is typically deployed as a NV layer that creates overlay networks on top of IP-based underlay networks. These overlays encapsulate tenant or application traffic, enabling isolated logical networks that can span multiple racks, clusters, or data centers without requiring changes to the physical network topology. This architecture supports multi-tenant environments, cloud platforms, and virtualized workloads that need flexible, programmatic network provisioning.
Nicira’s offerings center on distributed virtual switching and routing implemented in software, often integrated directly into hypervisors and virtual switches. This lets enterprises define logical switches, routers, and firewalls through software constructs rather than dedicated appliances. The control plane typically exposes programmatic interfaces and works with NV protocols and tunneling mechanisms such as Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN), STT, or similar encapsulation methods that are broadly used in SDN and NV ecosystems. The data plane operates at the edge, close to virtual machines or workloads, which enables consistent network behavior as workloads move within or across clusters.
From an enterprise architecture perspective, Nicira fits into categories such as SDN controllers (networking), network overlays (networking), and software-based micro-segmentation (network security). It is commonly positioned alongside virtualization platforms and cloud management systems, with APIs and integrations that allow network topology and security policies to be defined as part of automated provisioning workflows. This supports Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) patterns, where network configuration is versioned and managed alongside compute and storage definitions.
In marketplace and directory taxonomies, Nicira can be categorized under SDN (networking), NV overlays for cloud and data centers (networking), and software-based network security for virtualized environments (network security). Its focus on programmable, software-delivered switching, routing, and isolation targets organizations that need consistent network and security policies across heterogeneous infrastructure, including private clouds, hosted environments, and hybrid deployments that connect on-premises (on-prem) and external resources.
Our description of Nicira. Updated December 2025.
