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Amazon Plans To Challenge Cisco in Networking Market With Much Cheaper Switches, Report Says (theinformation.com)
Amazon Web Services already dominates the market for cloud services. Now, reports The Information, it is eyeing a part of the cloud business it doesn't already control: the $14 billion global market for data center switches [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From the report: AWS is considering selling its own networking switches for business customers -- hardware devices that move traffic around networks, according to a person with direct knowledge of the cloud unit's plans and another person who has been briefed on the project. The plan could plunge Amazon more deeply into the lucrative enterprise computing market, posing a direct challenge to incumbents in the business like Cisco, along with Arista Networks and Juniper Networks.
As it does in many other categories, Amazon plans to use price to undercut rivals. The company could price its white-box switches between 70% and 80% less than comparable switches from Cisco, one of the people with knowledge of the program estimated.
As it does in many other categories, Amazon plans to use price to undercut rivals. The company could price its white-box switches between 70% and 80% less than comparable switches from Cisco, one of the people with knowledge of the program estimated.
This is why Cisco purchased (2003), absorbed, destroyed, and released (2013) Linksys - their higher end devices were able to replace a growing percentage of the switches and routers being marketed towards smaller businesses. M&A is a very successful way to kill a competitor in the US, GOV rarely cares and is for sale, and the investors rarely care after they cash out. But Cisco can't afford Amazon. High end switch market has been a mess, software configured networking is eating it alive, and its amazing what you can do with a simple Docker network. Be nice to see someone with a budget release some cheaper hardware where we still need actual hardware.
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Software defined networking is great when dealing with networks at a high enough level. People have been making routers from commodity hardware for a very long time. Obviously people have produced special purpose hardware for routing as this means they can optimize the hardware for the task and can do so cheaper than someone grabbing a PC, filling it with interface cards, and loading some software onto it.
Switching is different than routing, it's done on a different level. The hardware needed is more complex, and therefore more expensive, than what is found in commodity computers. Go and try to find a software defined switch. I tried, and they don't exist. The closest you will find is a switch defined as a virtual machine. Load up something like VMWare ESXi and you'll find a way to create a software switch, but it can only switch packets among the virtual machines on that system.
People have made limited software switches with server style Ethernet cards (which grant greater access to the packet content than a desktop Ethernet controller) and the right kind of software but they are expensive and slow. They are really only useful for things like testing, training, or demonstrations.
This is a big deal because this means Amazon is getting in the hardware business in a way that is quite rare. Amazon is a large enough company that they may actually be able to follow through.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I heard the same thing about John Deere growing up. That John Deere was just green paint and a lot of snobbery.
Here's what I learned, farmers and ranchers are businessmen. They need to get work done like every other business. Downtime costs money. John Deere tractors still break down, get stuck in the mud, wear out, etc. It's that the competition do this more often. There's still some snobbery and such in there, John Deere tractors can have leather seats and built in refrigerator. They spend the money on the "green paint" because it gives them more return on their investment.
Is Cisco just a name? Maybe that's true now but they can only get to be "a name" by proving to be better over time. No one Is GMC just a name? Is Apple? Businessmen buy this stuff because it makes them money. If Cisco stops making people money, or rather they can make more money with someone else, then Cisco will disappear. Same goes for Apple, John Deere, and GMC.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
It won't take a whole lot to undercut Cisco since they have always had ridiculous pricing.
Even companies with damn near infinite amounts of cash finally started looking at other vendors because of ludicrous price levels.
However !
That said, I have decommissioned Cisco routers and switches that have been running ( without a reboot ) for twenty plus YEARS without a hiccup.
I doubt you're going to find that sort of reliability in anything offered at rock bottom prices.
So, while expensive as hell, I can't complain about the operational track record.
99% of the networking out there doesn't get more complicated than VLANs, QoS and spanning tree with maybe some pretty trivial static routing on top of it. You might find a little bit of OSPF routing here and there, either bigger physical campuses or multi-site environments trying to deal with automating failover between MPLS circuits and IPSec backups.
You need a CCIE for that like you need a PhD in chemistry to cook dinner.
That's not to say that CCIE isn't one of the best vendor certifications and CCIEs aren't smarter than the average bear, but it's also a pretty narrow space where it's an applicable requirement outside of larger telcos, data centers and carriers, and maybe places bought into very broad Cisco-specific product suites.
My point is mostly that the Cisco crowd likes to make "muh networking skillz" into some kind of mystical knowledge when it really isn't. It mostly seems like they hide behind a greatly elevated sense of phony expertise, which Cisco and their resellers are only all too happy to reinforce.