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Cisco Seen As Trying To 'Slow Down Arista Anyway They Can' With Patent Lawsuits (crn.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article by CRN:Partners say Cisco's end game with its patent lawsuits against Arista Networks is simply to slow the fast-growing networking company and stunt any innovation efforts from competitors. "Cisco's goal is to try to slow down Arista and competitors any way they can," said Chris Becerra, president and CEO of Terrapin Systems, a Morgan Hill, Calif.-based Arista partner. "If they don't have the technology to beat them out there, they're going to try to slow them down any way possible." Last week, the San Jose, Calif.-based network giant won three of five patent infringement suits against Santa Clara, Calif.-based Arista dealing with its networking switches. The International Trade Commission recommended a ban on Arista product imports containing the infringing technology. Additionally, the ITC also ruled earlier this year that Arista infringed on several other Cisco patents pertaining to its private VLANS, system database and externally managing router configuration with a centralized database -- recommending a similar ban on Arista imports.For those unfamiliar, Cisco had filed its trade complaint in December 2014, in which it sought a ban on Arista's switches. Arista, which designs and sells multilayer network switches to deliver software-defined networking solutions, was formed by former Cisco employees.
For years we bought pretty much only Cisco. Then from about 2003 onwards the sales team took over. Gone were the days of a useful website where you could quickly drill down to the documentation you wanted. Now you're presented with endless glossy white paper sales pitches full of buzzwords.
In parallel their hardware costs started to climb relative to their competitors. It was still very good hardware but all that glossy sales pitch and TV ad campaigns have to be paid for somehow so per port $ increases it is. To make their 10Gbit Nexus line they actually spun off a company, let them do the design and then bought them back once they had a product to prevent any ugliness with stock prices. Fair enough, but that's extra labor you have to recoup, so a bit extra $ per port increase there to.
When we needed 100 10Gbit ports we looked at Cisco, laughed at the price and bought Arista It's lower latency, rock solid and just works (ie all the things you used to expect from Cisco) but a hell of a lot cheaper.
As TFS mentions, "said Chris Becerra, president and CEO of Terrapin Systems, an Arista partner. " Arista says "wah Cisco is being mean to us" - after we illegally violated not one Cisco patent, but many, as confirmed by multiple hearings. On top of that, Arista is headed by a bunch of former Cisco employees. Sorry guys, when Cisco was paying you each $200,000 to develop new technologies, that was so CISCO could use them, not so you could take them home and sell them yourself.
If a bunch of people invested and risked their own time and money in the R&D for these technologies and came up with something Cisco didn't have, I would be rooting for them. When you're a Cisco employee living on Cisco money, working on Cisco projects, the results belong to Cisco.