At Interop (News - Alert) 2012, there were quite a few buzz words and phrases that were bandied about. Some of the buzziest terms were the cloud and software defined networking. They were so popular, in fact, that, when TMC CEO Rich Tehrani (News - Alert) sat down with Dan Tuchler, vice president of product management, system networking, at IBM, to discuss these trends.

Tuchler told Tehrani that IBM (News - Alert) feels well positioned to be at the head of these trends. The company can help customers rapidly deploy infrastructure to build up business units by helping put together the necessary components to create dynamic and flexible networks.

One trend Tuchler has seen is that application developers tend to get ahead of network administrators, deploying lots of virtualization to meet business demand, even if the network is not quite ready. But the software defined networking trend, he says, is perfectly suited to fill that gap.

To enable this new trend, IBM has several offerings. One of these is a v-switch, which operates inside the hypervisor in the server to allow for a continuous network that extends all the way into the server. With this, IT managers can see the entire network as one integrated unit.

Another technology that will play a key role in software defined networking, Tuchler says, is OpenFlow. IBM had the first 10-Gigabit switch in this space, which allows users to control the network at the application layer, and it is an area of technology that will be a major focus for the tech giant in coming years.

In terms of the cloud, Tuchler sees that IT departments are being challenged to roll out new kinds of infrastructure and make decisions about private versus public cloud. He sees IBM, with its new focus on networking, as a company that can play a major role in the future of this technology space.

Check out more videos from Interop 2012 here!