Policy management: leveraging the open virtualization format with contract and solution models

Over the past decade, virtualization technology has taken the world over by storm. This explosion has led the industry to market already existing virtualization technology, also known as infrastructure as a service, with the buzz word cloud computing. There has been much promise for return on investment, leading to significant research and a myriad of innovations in this domain. Despite the best efforts of industry leaders, there are still challenges with respect to enterprise security and policy management. In this article, we present the fundamentals of machine virtualization and simple network virtualization. We then provide a brief overview of network policy management throughout the evolution of virtualization. We then segue into current industry trends and some of its novel innovations. Throughout the article we discuss the challenges with respect to policy management. We finalize by analyzing existing solutions and building on them and those of the Distributed Management Task Force.