How Internet giants have turned the network hardware business upside down

Google, Facebook and Amazon do not sell switches and will never do that. However, these companies have managed to change how others sell such equipment.

Without switches (“switches”), it is impossible to imagine the work of the Internet - it is through them that huge amounts of data are sent between data centers and private networks. Traditionally, large American companies like Cisco and Juniper dominated the market for these devices - they offer customers quite expensive proprietary software.
')
But the traditional device of this market has gradually become increasingly inconvenient for growing Google, Facebook and Amazon. The equipment of American companies was too expensive and difficult to set up, so the Internet giants turned their attention to hardware vendors from Asia.

First of all, they were able to agree on the installation of the equipment of Asian manufacturers of "custom" firmware. At first, manufacturers reluctantly agreed to such a practice (and later some refused it altogether, since only IT giants can create their own software). However, later the market reached in this direction.

Last week, HP announced that it would begin selling "only iron" (that is, without software) switches, on which anyone can install their own software. At first glance, the news is not very impressive, but it speaks of a huge shift in the entire paradigm of the network device market. HP is following Juniper and Dell in providing customers with bare hardware.

“Everything happens much faster than I imagined,” says JR Rivers, CEO of Cumulus Networks, a startup that creates software for switches — this software HP is also going to offer to its customers.



JR Rivers

Some time, Rivers has been working on creating network equipment at Google, and now he is promoting the same ideas throughout the market as a whole. Google created switches to which you can install your own network software and further update it, now Cumulus helps other companies to do the same.

A couple of weeks ago, Facebook announced the transfer of its data centers to internally developed switches and software for managing them.



Facebook modular switchboard called "6-pack"

The emerging situation is clearly concerned at Cisco, according to Wired journalists, because right after the news from Facebook, the manufacturer of network equipment sent a press release to the publication stating that "8 out of the 10 largest Internet companies are Cisco customers", and Facebook creates own servers because “a company can satisfy some unique requirements only with the help of its own developments”.

In fact, there is nothing unique in the idea of ​​switching to our own equipment.

Cade Metz of Wired believes that the network equipment market will soon become similar to the PC and server market - hardware and software will be separated, which will allow customers to combine them, honing them for their own needs.