Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking Market: Arista Networks Leading
Gartner, a research and consulting company specializing in information technology markets, has published its latest “magic quadrant” in the data center networking technology market. We will tell you about the important points from the report, as well as about the evaluation of one of the leaders - Arista Networks.
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In the market last year there was no single trend for all vendors, but there were several trends that make significant changes in the work of data centers. Thus, the increase in interest in white-box testing has increased significantly over the past year due to the use of the largest companies in the data centers, such as Dell, Juniper, HP. Also among other trends, there is a greater demand for virtualization, which provides greater maneuverability in networks. Organizations are also looking for less proprietary systems than those they used before.
It is worth noting the new pricing models, including the prices of subscriptions to services and the section of equipment and software segments. There are new cost-effective platforms for switches that support work on Ethernet networks from 25 Gb / s to 100 Gb / s. The IP protocol is increasingly used, which gives more traffic to data center networks.
Over the past 12 months, the market has stabilized, and many companies have focused on data center data transfer. Instead of focusing on the introduction of serious innovations, last year there was a more pragmatic approach - the deployment of an automated structure and the main software-defined networks.
Vendors paid more attention to expanding the existing functionality, rather than changes to the architecture, which would change the established rules of the game. More and more small manufacturers began to attract attention. As real alternatives, they focus on open networking solutions.
Typical enterprise applications have become more distributed and more independent of specific servers. The elasticity of their deployment has also increased - now it is much easier to do this than a few years ago. Applications used in the big data segment have more stringent bandwidth, latency, and buffering requirements than traditional applications. In addition, there is a growing trend towards the containerization of microservice architectures. This, as well as increasing traffic volumes, has led to the introduction of several innovations, for example, intelligent Top-Of-Rack-switches with increased bandwidth, the increasing use of fixed form factor (FFF) routers, etc. transfer data from server to server, and also allow network data centers to provide the same set of capabilities for all connected computing resources.
Now the network data center segment continues to evolve, increasing the range of open and detailed solutions. At the same time, some vendors focus on more closed, proprietary systems. Enterprises, on the other hand, must weigh the pros and cons when choosing different approaches that are used by suppliers and are provided by one or another architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on the possibilities of the software.
Now requirements for the data center are rapidly evolving after a period of relative stability, which lasted about 15 years. While the load on them is increasing every day, the basic architecture still relies on a three-level hierarchical approach. At the same time, over the past two years, organizations are increasingly using the two-tier architecture of a “thickened tree” (Fat Tree), in which connections become wider with each level of the “tree” as it approaches its root. This increases system flexibility, reduces costs and significantly increases productivity.
A new approach to web scaling, which is used in companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, has changed the paradigm of providing IT services. This has a beneficial effect on management practices and purchasing power in enterprises. Now they are trying to improve skills and provide increased flexibility and more convenient management for less money for their units.
All this will have consequences for the corporate data center market. In this way, new solutions, architectures and suppliers will appear on it. These changes will bring the following results:
- Network operations will be improved and simplified, data center operations will become more flexible and will increasingly meet the requirements of customers;
- change the size and density of data within the data center;
- Open standards-based free solutions will emerge that enhance interoperability, stimulate innovation and reduce the dependence of companies on a single supplier.
Arista Networks market place
Gartner has ranked Arista Networks in its square as the leader. And for good reason. Arista Networks continues to be one of the fastest growing vendors. In 2015, revenue growth from the company's products left 40.6%. As of 2015, Arista had about 3,700 customers, and its share in the network of data center networks was 8.5%.
The company has expanded its portfolio of proposals for the organization of communication between customer equipment and data centers, which is crucial for building cloud infrastructure in enterprises. For this, Arista uses a solution based on its own operating system EOS (Extensible Operating System). This software can be integrated into almost all data center control architectures. Last year, the company also introduced CloudVision - a single point of network management, which facilitates integration with third-party software-configured network solutions to achieve automation. Arista provides enhanced monitoring capabilities, providing real-time, network-wide telemetry and analytics.
Among the strengths of the company Gartner highlights the following points:
- Arista provides tight integration with a wide range of orchestration software and software-defined network solutions. It gives its customers the flexibility due to the programmability of their EOS platform, based on the standard Linux OS.
- Customers are provided with a single point of management (CloudVision), telemetry, extensible APIs, software development kit (SDK), etc.
- Arista offers a portfolio of products with various form factors, including some large fixed configuration switches, which allows the customer to get the optimal configuration and cost-effective solutions for any environment.
- The company provides high performance and highly scalable solutions.
At the same time, Gartner also points out some points over which Arista Networks should pay attention. This is a scant geographic coverage, which is mainly limited to the countries of North America and Western Europe. Also, Arista does not provide interfaces for converged storage networks, where FC (or FCoE) protocols are mandatory. Correction of these and some other shortcomings will certainly strengthen the company's position in the market.
')
In the market last year there was no single trend for all vendors, but there were several trends that make significant changes in the work of data centers. Thus, the increase in interest in white-box testing has increased significantly over the past year due to the use of the largest companies in the data centers, such as Dell, Juniper, HP. Also among other trends, there is a greater demand for virtualization, which provides greater maneuverability in networks. Organizations are also looking for less proprietary systems than those they used before.
It is worth noting the new pricing models, including the prices of subscriptions to services and the section of equipment and software segments. There are new cost-effective platforms for switches that support work on Ethernet networks from 25 Gb / s to 100 Gb / s. The IP protocol is increasingly used, which gives more traffic to data center networks.
Over the past 12 months, the market has stabilized, and many companies have focused on data center data transfer. Instead of focusing on the introduction of serious innovations, last year there was a more pragmatic approach - the deployment of an automated structure and the main software-defined networks.
Vendors paid more attention to expanding the existing functionality, rather than changes to the architecture, which would change the established rules of the game. More and more small manufacturers began to attract attention. As real alternatives, they focus on open networking solutions.
Typical enterprise applications have become more distributed and more independent of specific servers. The elasticity of their deployment has also increased - now it is much easier to do this than a few years ago. Applications used in the big data segment have more stringent bandwidth, latency, and buffering requirements than traditional applications. In addition, there is a growing trend towards the containerization of microservice architectures. This, as well as increasing traffic volumes, has led to the introduction of several innovations, for example, intelligent Top-Of-Rack-switches with increased bandwidth, the increasing use of fixed form factor (FFF) routers, etc. transfer data from server to server, and also allow network data centers to provide the same set of capabilities for all connected computing resources.
Now the network data center segment continues to evolve, increasing the range of open and detailed solutions. At the same time, some vendors focus on more closed, proprietary systems. Enterprises, on the other hand, must weigh the pros and cons when choosing different approaches that are used by suppliers and are provided by one or another architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on the possibilities of the software.
Now requirements for the data center are rapidly evolving after a period of relative stability, which lasted about 15 years. While the load on them is increasing every day, the basic architecture still relies on a three-level hierarchical approach. At the same time, over the past two years, organizations are increasingly using the two-tier architecture of a “thickened tree” (Fat Tree), in which connections become wider with each level of the “tree” as it approaches its root. This increases system flexibility, reduces costs and significantly increases productivity.
A new approach to web scaling, which is used in companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, has changed the paradigm of providing IT services. This has a beneficial effect on management practices and purchasing power in enterprises. Now they are trying to improve skills and provide increased flexibility and more convenient management for less money for their units.
All this will have consequences for the corporate data center market. In this way, new solutions, architectures and suppliers will appear on it. These changes will bring the following results:
- Network operations will be improved and simplified, data center operations will become more flexible and will increasingly meet the requirements of customers;
- change the size and density of data within the data center;
- Open standards-based free solutions will emerge that enhance interoperability, stimulate innovation and reduce the dependence of companies on a single supplier.
Arista Networks market place
Gartner has ranked Arista Networks in its square as the leader. And for good reason. Arista Networks continues to be one of the fastest growing vendors. In 2015, revenue growth from the company's products left 40.6%. As of 2015, Arista had about 3,700 customers, and its share in the network of data center networks was 8.5%.
The company has expanded its portfolio of proposals for the organization of communication between customer equipment and data centers, which is crucial for building cloud infrastructure in enterprises. For this, Arista uses a solution based on its own operating system EOS (Extensible Operating System). This software can be integrated into almost all data center control architectures. Last year, the company also introduced CloudVision - a single point of network management, which facilitates integration with third-party software-configured network solutions to achieve automation. Arista provides enhanced monitoring capabilities, providing real-time, network-wide telemetry and analytics.
Among the strengths of the company Gartner highlights the following points:
- Arista provides tight integration with a wide range of orchestration software and software-defined network solutions. It gives its customers the flexibility due to the programmability of their EOS platform, based on the standard Linux OS.
- Customers are provided with a single point of management (CloudVision), telemetry, extensible APIs, software development kit (SDK), etc.
- Arista offers a portfolio of products with various form factors, including some large fixed configuration switches, which allows the customer to get the optimal configuration and cost-effective solutions for any environment.
- The company provides high performance and highly scalable solutions.
At the same time, Gartner also points out some points over which Arista Networks should pay attention. This is a scant geographic coverage, which is mainly limited to the countries of North America and Western Europe. Also, Arista does not provide interfaces for converged storage networks, where FC (or FCoE) protocols are mandatory. Correction of these and some other shortcomings will certainly strengthen the company's position in the market.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/304820/
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