It's not unheard of getting Cisco to give you discounts on hardware as deep as 80-85%, provided you're able to commit to buy a lot of equipment -- say, several

It's not unheard of getting Cisco to give you discounts on hardware as deep as 80-85%, provided you're able to commit to buy a lot of equipment -- say, several millions $ per year. Other major networking equipment manufacturers have similar policies. If you're a small company, you have basically two options: the first is that you buy the big three equipment through a distributor with a lower discount. The other way is to recognize that the vast majority of the modern switches -- even brand name ones -- have very similar hardware: they're basically an x86 computer with a Broadcom switching/routing chip bolted on through PCI-E. Broadcom sells their chips on the open market, so you can get relatively cheap switch hardware from a less known vendor (FS, Quanta, Mellanox at least until recently), and install a networking operating system such as Sonic. However, you'll be on the hook for supporting and debugging it yourself. There are intermediate options like using the switch's vendor operating system, but you probably won't get support at the big three level -- no next business day replacement, no TAC handholding (Not that the bar is too high.) This is a dealbreaker for many: you want your network to be solid, or at least have access to people able to quickly troubleshoot the arising issues. It's easy with Cisco, slighly less so with Juniper, and practically impossible with whiteboxes. Basically, Cisco is the IBM of 1970s: nobody gets fired for buying it, and the only thing they should fear is accidentally disrupting themselves. With the recent chip shortage, lead times on the big three gear shot up, so there is a prime chance for Chinese manufacturers (Huawei, H3C) to step up and fulfill the need -- at least outside of US and Europe.