I’ve been an advocate of virtual networking for both enterprises and network operators, with a special focus on SD-WAN. What’s really important, though, is the “virtual networking” antecedent, and I think that a reunion of virtual network technology and SD-WAN is coming. The driver is likely the cloud, and the instrument of change may be Arista’s purchase of Pluribus Networks.
Pluribus, which is now being combined into Arista’s Converged Cloud Fabric, targets the unification of two important trends. First, cloud computing is really hybrid cloud (as IBM has been saying) and there will be (according to Arista) twice as much application deployment remaining in the data center as moving (or, more properly, being created for) the cloud. Second, the data center needs to optimize virtualization, which means abstracting the hardware from the software, in order to create efficiency and agility. Networking is the glue that has to unite these trends because it extends both applications and resources across a wider zone, one that needs unified connectivity despite being administratively and technologically separating on a near-continuous basis.
Technically, this approach is based on SDN, but SDN using a fully distributed control plane rather than central (and, in larger installations, hierarchical) controllers. Each Pluribus-device runs an instance of their OS, so they’re presumed to be white-box devices or endpoints that can run an instance as a process. The data center piece is based on the presumption that current top-of-rack switches will be subducted under the new Pluribus-equipped devices, which will then gate them into the new framework even though they’re not really SDN elements in themselves. You can link these Pluribus switches across any underlay DCI technology to create a distributed virtual data center.
Public clouds can also be connected to this “cloud fabric”, and not just one but (in theory) all of them. This has the obvious benefit of making all hosting resources part of a unified network, which facilitates unified deployment, management, and monitoring. It would appear that the same capabilities could be used to extend the Converged Cloud Fabric to branch locations. You can see how this augments Arista’s own position in the market.
Further hints about augmented marketing position can be found in one of the solution categories, which is “Unified Cloud Fabric for Metro”. Aimed at network operators who want to shift away from the MPLS framework that dominates corporate VPNs, this solution is an indication that Arista is going to take a more serious run at the service provider space, and that it has its eyes on the “metro” space. The question is whether they see the full potential of metro.
Converged Cloud Fabric at the data center level is a pretty decent foundation for operator-provided edge computing, which would likely be hosted in the metro. If you let CCF link in public cloud connections, it would also be a framework where an operator could supplement its in-area hosting with public cloud services offered out of area. A single foundation created by integrating all the hosting resources would simplify virtual-function deployment. You could even, in theory, link in the customer-owned edge facilities that cloud providers are working to claim as a part of their own cloud services.
Pluribus also takes a stab at what could be called “vertical integration”. Network vendors don’t typically talk about things like containers and Kubernetes, but Pluribus has done a number of announcements on the topic. They don’t supply container tools but they do work to integrate and support them explicitly. That adds some credibility to their claims, and also helps engage the IT and CIO teams more broadly.
If we broaden our thinking on vertical integration to areas where Pluribus/Arista partnerships might be a play, we can’t help but notice two conspicuous ones, Ericsson and Broadcom. Obviously, Ericsson is a 5G and network operator vendor, and obviously Broadcom just acquired VMware. Arista is also a Broadcom (and VMware) partner as well as a partner to a broader range of software companies. They are not an Ericsson partner, so how that particular relationship will play out is still a question mark.
Which could be good or bad with regard to what I think is the Big Question here, which is whether Arista/Pluribus intends to really make a run at the metro space. There is little opportunity for anyone other than a mobile equipment giant or a big router/optical vendor to do much for network operators beyond metro, but metro fuses hosting and networking, hardware and software. It’s also where whatever value operators hope to add to services in the future will have to be connected. There’s no hotter spot in operator infrastructure than metro, so a metro thrust by Arista could be big news.
It would put them in direct collision with Juniper, whose Cloud Metro story is the only other explicit positioning in the metro infrastructure space. Without Pluribus, Arista would have no real claim to the metro space at all, and even with it, Juniper probably has an overall technical edge. Neither firm has really solidified its metro positioning to match market requirements at this point, and of course Arista/Pluribus positioning is a work in progress, so it’s very difficult to say whether one or the other has a natural advantage. Juniper has broader tech reach and a really good AI story, plus carrier incumbency. Arista has more software-centricity and a bit more of a cloud integration story. Throw the dice here, for now.
The biggest question of all, though, is whether virtual networking will get an overall boost here. The current Pluribus metro story is really about an MPLS alternative, which means an SD-WAN alternative too. However, their material isn’t really strong in positioning themselves within a branch or inside a cloud, places where Juniper (via 128 Technology) has very strong technology. It appears that the Pluribus virtual-SDN approach could add connection-level controls, which Juniper also gets with 128T. Juniper has Contrail, but they’ve not pushed it at the same targets Pluribus has worked to cover.
It’s really difficult to say whether Arista could mount a serious run at metro infrastructure. Juniper’s AI targets operations efficiency and improved cost per bit explicitly, and their greatest vulnerability is a lack of linkage between metro networks and carrier cloud. However, the operators themselves aren’t convinced they’d deploy carrier cloud, and Arista’s story in the linkage needs a lot of refinement too. What’s easy to say is that Pluribus gives Arista a shot they didn’t have before, and the company isn’t any shrinking violet in taking advantage of new situations.
