5 ms·

What really struck me from this is the complete move over to software based networking. If all the big cloud players do this, and if you think a lot of infrastr

What really struck me from this is the complete move over to software based networking. If all the big cloud players do this, and if you think a lot of infrastructure will be moving over to the cloud (because of cost pressures) over the next few years, what does that mean for Cisco and other big sellers of hardware based networking gear? Is that whole business going to go away?

brazzledazzle 10y ago
I guess they'll still have their office gear like SMB, firewall, WAN, etc. to lean for a while.
- sithadmin 10y ago
  > they'll still have their office gear like SMB, firewall, WAN, etc. to lean for a while. A while? More like forever. Short of corporations abandoning the notion of shared physical workspaces (which isn't likely to happen in the foreseeable future), corporate MDF, IDF, and edge gear will always be around in some form or another.
- wmf 10y ago
  People are already starting to talk about whiteboxing the branch office by running all the "value" as VMs (VNFs) on a generic x86 box.
  - brazzledazzle 10y ago
    Even in that scenario they still have a bit of an edge because they can still take advantage of their lead on software by turning their stuff into virtual appliances.
    - jodrellblank 10y ago
      Which they already do offer: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/virtual-adaptive-security-appliance-firewall/index.html http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/virtual-adapt... http://www.juniper.net/uk/en/products-services/security/srx-series/vsrx/ http://www.juniper.net/uk/en/products-services/security/srx-... https://www.sonicwall.com/products/sra-virtual-appliance/ https://www.sonicwall.com/products/sra-virtual-appliance/ http://www.watchguard.com/products/xtmv/overview.asp http://www.watchguard.com/products/xtmv/overview.asp
sithadmin 10y ago
>Is that whole business going to go away? No. It's just going to look different, with the most successful vendors selling flexible, nearly white-box hardware with good long-term maintenance terms. > if you think a lot of infrastructure will be moving over to the cloud (because of cost pressures) over the next few years There's certainly going to be a TON of infrastructure moving to 'the cloud' in the next 5-10 years, but cost isn't necessarily the strongest driving factor pushing cloud adoption. Big, established Enterprise-with-a-capital-E type businesses are often quite capable of continuing to run infrastructure in-house with better bang-for-buck in terms of raw capacity than what is presently capable with public/hosted private cloud solutions.
- eigenvalue 10y ago
  I'm guessing the gross margin on "nearly white-box hardware" (even with the maintenance contracts) is a lot less than the 64% Cisco is doing now!
greedo 10y ago
Cisco is big into SDN. We've just finished a rollout of ACI where I work.
blahi 10y ago
If you pay attention to Cisco's communications and moves you will see what they are doing - moving from hardware to software (an operating system and related services) and letting go thousands of hardware engineers.
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  Cisco's software has been utter rubbish for the entire lifetime of the company. Without the hardware why would anybody go to Cisco for software? CIOs are just stuck in a mental rut?
  - blahi 10y ago
    Cisco is one of the top most beloved b2b brands. I'm talking Apple level attachment here.
  - jodrellblank 10y ago
    Because you're trained, certified and experienced on Cisco's proprietary and cruddy command line. Why wouldn't you push for that and a high salary, instead of something generic for a low salary?
danohu 10y ago
I was also surprised by this. I thought networking was an area where dedicated hardware had an obvious advantage, because you need to do simple, well-specified things very fast.
erentz 10y ago
Beyond using overlay networks from the hypervisor and doing things like load balancing in software with a bit of extra special sauce, there isn't really as much "software defined networking" going on in these places. Certainly no magic as articles like this make out. In the underlay it's all still very much basic, old fashioned networking using existing protocols: BGP in the DC at FB and MSFT, and BGP, ISIS, MPLS in the WANs. (AMZN likes to pretend they're special so I won't comment on them.) Google is a bit different, in part I think this is due to their culture and early scale they were forced to drive a lot of developments wrt merchant silicon use, and this naturally led them to their own network OS solutions, with a simplified semi-centralized IGP solution for their DCs, and centralized-TE solution for their inter-DC WAN. It's not entirely clear to me if they would still feel the need to do this if they were starting again.

brazzledazzle 10y ago

I guess they'll still have their office gear like SMB, firewall, WAN, etc. to lean for a while.

sithadmin 10y ago
> they'll still have their office gear like SMB, firewall, WAN, etc. to lean for a while. A while? More like forever. Short of corporations abandoning the notion of shared physical workspaces (which isn't likely to happen in the foreseeable future), corporate MDF, IDF, and edge gear will always be around in some form or another.
wmf 10y ago
People are already starting to talk about whiteboxing the branch office by running all the "value" as VMs (VNFs) on a generic x86 box.
- brazzledazzle 10y ago
  Even in that scenario they still have a bit of an edge because they can still take advantage of their lead on software by turning their stuff into virtual appliances.
  - jodrellblank 10y ago
    Which they already do offer: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/virtual-adaptive-security-appliance-firewall/index.html http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/virtual-adapt... http://www.juniper.net/uk/en/products-services/security/srx-series/vsrx/ http://www.juniper.net/uk/en/products-services/security/srx-... https://www.sonicwall.com/products/sra-virtual-appliance/ https://www.sonicwall.com/products/sra-virtual-appliance/ http://www.watchguard.com/products/xtmv/overview.asp http://www.watchguard.com/products/xtmv/overview.asp

sithadmin 10y ago

>Is that whole business going to go away? No. It's just going to look different, with the most successful vendors selling flexible, nearly white-box hardware with good long-term maintenance terms. > if you think a lot of infrastructure will be moving over to the cloud (because of cost pressures) over the next few years There's certainly going to be a TON of infrastructure moving to 'the cloud' in the next 5-10 years, but cost isn't necessarily the strongest driving factor pushing cloud adoption. Big, established Enterprise-with-a-capital-E type businesses are often quite capable of continuing to run infrastructure in-house with better bang-for-buck in terms of raw capacity than what is presently capable with public/hosted private cloud solutions.

eigenvalue 10y ago
I'm guessing the gross margin on "nearly white-box hardware" (even with the maintenance contracts) is a lot less than the 64% Cisco is doing now!

greedo 10y ago

Cisco is big into SDN. We've just finished a rollout of ACI where I work.

blahi 10y ago

If you pay attention to Cisco's communications and moves you will see what they are doing - moving from hardware to software (an operating system and related services) and letting go thousands of hardware engineers.

honkhonkpants 10y ago
Cisco's software has been utter rubbish for the entire lifetime of the company. Without the hardware why would anybody go to Cisco for software? CIOs are just stuck in a mental rut?
- blahi 10y ago
  Cisco is one of the top most beloved b2b brands. I'm talking Apple level attachment here.
- jodrellblank 10y ago
  Because you're trained, certified and experienced on Cisco's proprietary and cruddy command line. Why wouldn't you push for that and a high salary, instead of something generic for a low salary?

danohu 10y ago

I was also surprised by this. I thought networking was an area where dedicated hardware had an obvious advantage, because you need to do simple, well-specified things very fast.

erentz 10y ago

Beyond using overlay networks from the hypervisor and doing things like load balancing in software with a bit of extra special sauce, there isn't really as much "software defined networking" going on in these places. Certainly no magic as articles like this make out. In the underlay it's all still very much basic, old fashioned networking using existing protocols: BGP in the DC at FB and MSFT, and BGP, ISIS, MPLS in the WANs. (AMZN likes to pretend they're special so I won't comment on them.) Google is a bit different, in part I think this is due to their culture and early scale they were forced to drive a lot of developments wrt merchant silicon use, and this naturally led them to their own network OS solutions, with a simplified semi-centralized IGP solution for their DCs, and centralized-TE solution for their inter-DC WAN. It's not entirely clear to me if they would still feel the need to do this if they were starting again.