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Amazon Web Services Isn't Making a 'Commercial' Networking Switch, Cisco Says (geekwire.com)

Posted by msmash on from the he-says-she-says dept.

A week after a report claimed that Amazon Web Services was building its own bare-bones networking switch in a potential threat to networking giant companies, Cisco says it has checked with Amazon, with which it has long maintained a relationship, and it has been assured by the ecommerce giant that is not entering its territory. From a report: AWS CEO Andy Jassy and Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins had a "recent call" from which Robbins walked away satisfied that AWS wasn't "actively building a commercial network switch," Marketwatch reported Wednesday, citing a statement from Cisco that it confirmed as authentic with AWS. That follows a report last week from The Information that AWS was working on a so-called "white-box switch," which the site portrayed as a frontal assault on Cisco that sent networking stocks slumping on a lazy summer Friday afternoon.

5 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. That's not the purpose...yet by omnichad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You have to make the dog food, then eat your own dog food. And then, it becomes commercial dog food. This is the way of AWS already. Right now, they're just making this for themselves - any future application is pure coincidence.

    1. Re:That's not the purpose...yet by darkain · · Score: 2

      And they are not the only ones, at this scale it is normal. Facebook worked with Intel to create teh Xeon-D processor (which is now available on the normal market as a SoC ITX board) https://code.fb.com/data-cente...

  2. Amazon still dependent on Cisco hardware? by swb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "We reminded Amazon of the contract language that prohibits them from selling competitive hardware devices or face immediate loss of support and revocation of all software licenses."

  3. I misspoke... by dex22 · · Score: 3, Funny

    When we said "We aren't planning to not make commercial routers in competition with Cisco" what we meant to say was "We are planning to not make routers i competition with Cisco. Our bad. So sorry!" :D

  4. Re:Cisco wouldn't care about yet another cheap swi by skids · · Score: 2

    CIsco sells the brand. There may be niche markets where cisco gear is needed, but in the majority of situations, any of a number of vendors would operate just as well. Cisco gets by on inertia... a combination of slightly non-standard features that unwitting users have started using and are locked into, and the general cowardice of network managers to make the leap to buying something other than what their predecessor bought.

    Don't get me wrong, Cisco's gear is top notch (though "top notch" these days really is putting too shiny a finish on it... let's go with "least suck") but it is by no means head and shoulders above the competition, and rather expensive unless it's you only option (i.e. you're doing something weird with TDM/IP)

    --
    Someone had to do it.