4 ms·

It sounds too good to me. How will they make money in the Ethernet switching sector?

by ju-st 11y ago

pm90 11y ago
Its probably aimed at bringing Cisco's revenues down.
noplay 11y ago
Selling software for central management
jeffasinger 11y ago
If this becomes the main type of switch, then HP would be in a great position to offer integrations and consulting.
- wmf 11y ago
  I think that's the explanation for HP's adoption of ODM/OCP. More and more customers are going to buy it, so HP can either get with the program or lose those customers permanently.
- ju-st 11y ago
  The companies that need integrations and consulting are more likely to buy Cisco. This open source OS will be in the "experimental" status for quite some time.
gricardo99 11y ago
the higher-end switches take considerable engineering, just on the hardware side, and are fairly high-margin products. If the networking equipment space becomes OS agnostic, or consolidates around OpenSwitch, this removes one of Cisco's major advantages (their huge installed-base, network OS dominance, customer switching costs), and allows HP (and others) to compete directly on network equipment hardware architecture/performance/cost. More competition in that area would be a very good thing (maybe not so good for Cisco's dominance). It's also good to decouple the hardware from the OS/software, and allow innovation in both areas independently.
- epistasis 11y ago
  >the higher-end switches take considerable engineering, just on the hardware side, and are fairly high-margin products This hasn't been true for a couple years now, at least for top-of-rack and spine switches. White-box switches are now accessible to the general public, have low margins, and are not limited to huge purchasers like Facebook and Amazon.
mzayats 11y ago
"all of the above" is probably the correct one :)
tw04 11y ago
Candidly - their switches in my experience are garbage. They aren't making money, and they know they can't beat Cisco with a traditional approach. If I had to guess they're hoping that opening things up will make them the vendor of choice for enterprises looking to mimic Google/Facebook. This feels like a hail mary with the future of their presence in the network switching space to me.

It sounds too good to me. How will they make money in the Ethernet switching sector?

by ju-st 11y ago

It sounds too good to me. How will they make money in the Ethernet switching sector?

pm90 11y ago

Its probably aimed at bringing Cisco's revenues down.

noplay 11y ago

Selling software for central management

jeffasinger 11y ago

If this becomes the main type of switch, then HP would be in a great position to offer integrations and consulting.

wmf 11y ago
I think that's the explanation for HP's adoption of ODM/OCP. More and more customers are going to buy it, so HP can either get with the program or lose those customers permanently.
ju-st 11y ago
The companies that need integrations and consulting are more likely to buy Cisco. This open source OS will be in the "experimental" status for quite some time.

gricardo99 11y ago

the higher-end switches take considerable engineering, just on the hardware side, and are fairly high-margin products. If the networking equipment space becomes OS agnostic, or consolidates around OpenSwitch, this removes one of Cisco's major advantages (their huge installed-base, network OS dominance, customer switching costs), and allows HP (and others) to compete directly on network equipment hardware architecture/performance/cost. More competition in that area would be a very good thing (maybe not so good for Cisco's dominance). It's also good to decouple the hardware from the OS/software, and allow innovation in both areas independently.

epistasis 11y ago
>the higher-end switches take considerable engineering, just on the hardware side, and are fairly high-margin products This hasn't been true for a couple years now, at least for top-of-rack and spine switches. White-box switches are now accessible to the general public, have low margins, and are not limited to huge purchasers like Facebook and Amazon.

mzayats 11y ago

"all of the above" is probably the correct one :)

tw04 11y ago

Candidly - their switches in my experience are garbage. They aren't making money, and they know they can't beat Cisco with a traditional approach. If I had to guess they're hoping that opening things up will make them the vendor of choice for enterprises looking to mimic Google/Facebook. This feels like a hail mary with the future of their presence in the network switching space to me.