The Time for Zero Trust Networking is Now
Arista is trusted and powers the world’s largest data centers and cloud providers based on the quality, support and performance of its products. The experience gained from working with over 7000 customers has helped redefine software defined networking and many of our customers have asked us how we plan to address security. To us, security must be a holistic and inherent part of the network. Our customers have been subjected to the fatigue of point products, reactive solutions, proprietary vendor lock-ins and most of all, operational silos created between CloudOps, NetOps, DevOps and SecOps. By leveraging cloud principles, Arista’s cloud network architectures bring disparate operations together to secure all digital assets across client to IoT, campus, data center and cloud protecting them from threats, thefts and compromises.
Goodbye 2020, Hello 2021!!
I don’t know about you but I am eagerly looking forward to the new year erasing all the negativity and losses that 2020 brought to our broader lives, health and the global economy. Today I digress to make some predictions on the post-pandemic era that are likely to change the way we live, learn, work and play, blending the lines between those distinct functions we had once partitioned.
Looking Glass of Cloud Networking
Since the 2000 era, the network has changed dramatically, becoming more and more mission-critical. There are so many drivers powering today’s digital network transformation. Think about the Internet of Things or the cloud native applications or OT, operational technology. All of these are connected via cognitive cloud networking with its agile software stack, programmability and a leaf-spine network for all traffic types. This cloud network, pioneered by Arista is hungry for more innovation when it comes to secure visibility. It is a hard problem after all—network data is orders of magnitude more voluminous then typical data sources of ingestion.
Looking Glass of Cloud Networking
Since the 2000 era, the network has changed dramatically, becoming more and more mission-critical. There are so many drivers powering today’s digital network transformation. Think about the Internet of Things or the cloud native applications or OT, operational technology. All of these are connected via cognitive cloud networking with its agile software stack, programmability and a leaf-spine network for all traffic types. This cloud network, pioneered by Arista is hungry for more innovation when it comes to secure visibility. It is a hard problem after all—network data is orders of magnitude more voluminous then typical data sources of ingestion.
The Arista 750 Series
Today we are introducing the Arista 750 Series Modular Campus switch, a next generation modular platform based on merchant silicon that delivers more performance, more security, more visibility and more power capabilities than any other product in its class.
The Next Generation of Cognitive Campus Workspaces
Campus networks are undergoing another massive transition in the COVID teleworking era. With this fundamental shift and as administrators consider an interconnected IoT (Internet of Things) environment, the boundary between the office, home, teleworker and user is converging. Security concerns with ever-increasing threat vectors are substantiated. How does one secure an IoT environment and guard against malware and outbreaks? How is the network impacted as some workloads shift to the cloud? Why do we cope with wired and wireless silos? The challenge lies in successfully transitioning the existing siloed campus into an integral data-driven model for clients, users and devices from IoT to cloud with a common experience, while addressing security and availability needs with lower operational costs. These are the key requirements of the third-generation campus evolution as shown in the figure below.
The Next Generation of Cognitive Campus Workspaces
Campus networks are undergoing another massive transition in the COVID teleworking era. With this fundamental shift and as administrators consider an interconnected IoT (Internet of Things) environment, the boundary between the office, home, teleworker and user is converging. Security concerns with ever-increasing threat vectors are substantiated. How does one secure an IoT environment and guard against malware and outbreaks? How is the network impacted as some workloads shift to the cloud? Why do we cope with wired and wireless silos? The challenge lies in successfully transitioning the existing siloed campus into an integral data-driven model for clients, users and devices from IoT to cloud with a common experience, while addressing security and availability needs with lower operational costs. These are the key requirements of the third-generation campus evolution as shown in the figure below.
Security’s Role in Client to Cloud Networking
The Networking industry is undergoing a metamorphosis. Modern networking operations teams are challenged to cope with multiple operational models. As attackers become better and better at breaching our defenses, security analysts are increasingly at the heart of a security organization. The operators are responsible for detecting, investigating and remediating potential breaches before they progress into brand, customer, financial and IP damage. This confluence of DevOps, NetOps, SecOps, and CloudOps demands persistent operations control. How do you cope with decades of security, threat and cyber detection done in reactive silos? What happens as more workloads move to the cloud? At Arista, we value our ecosystem of security partners and networking must adapt to the new complex threats.
The CloudVision Journey
Traditional networking has been transformed by cloud-networking principles. These principles drive an open, software-first approach to efficient automation, granular telemetry, and proactive analytics that have simplified traditional network operations. At Arista, we align our product strategy to these cloud networking principles and build our products based on modern software approaches. One such approach is the network-wide state and inference-driven architecture to manage networks with CloudVision. Arista’s strategic approach to automation, analytics, and change control has made CloudVision one of the favorite choices in the menu for our enterprise customers.
Journey Through Open Networking
Arista has a decade long history of collaboration in open networking. We have pushed the envelope, co-developed open platforms and deployed them to build the world’s largest cloud -scale networks.
Next Generation Cognitive Networking
Just a decade ago, public cloud titans Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure Cloud, became synonymous with elastic scaling, and software provisioning through APIs. This was a phenomenon that didn’t exist within closed legacy systems.
Private clouds, by contrast, saw the relevance of enterprise customers recreating an infrastructure based on public cloud principles operating at a smaller scale. In an ideal world, both clouds would allow application developers to create and choose where to deploy applications without trade-offs. Arista pioneered technology development in this cloud networking category and today with Covid-19 restrictions driving millions of users to work-from-home, there are tremendous pressures on network access and bandwidth.
COVID-19 Response – A Letter from Our CEO
As a leading supplier of cloud networking equipment globally, Arista plays a critical role in supporting the cloud communications and computing infrastructure that will keep the world running during these difficult times. The rapid acceleration of Covid-19 developments across the world has been sudden and shocking. It has forced us to take a new perspective on gratitude for what we have, including our families, health and an opportunity to rethink our goals.
COVID-19 Response – A Letter from Our CEO
As a leading supplier of cloud networking equipment globally, Arista plays a critical role in supporting the cloud communications and computing infrastructure that will keep the world running during these difficult times. The rapid acceleration of Covid-19 developments across the world has been sudden and shocking. It has forced us to take a new perspective on gratitude for what we have, including our families, health and an opportunity to rethink our goals.
Cloud Networking Transformation Ahead
Networking is undergoing a metamorphosis. Today’s operations are challenged to cope with the DevOps, NetOps, SecOps and CloudOps models that need consistent operations control. Why should enterprises care? How do you cope with decades of legacy and is change possible? Arista believes that the networking world is at the cusp of a transformation, significantly facilitated by the agile, dynamic and economic network models of the public cloud providers. They have proven the elegance of simple yet scalable designs that transform siloed networks for the data center, core, campus or branch PINs (Places in the Network) into east west PICs(Places in the Cloud). This new paradigm is a far cry from the traditional siloed network architectures that required applications to be assigned to specific servers or storage, causing fixed-function rigidity. Agility and high availability are pivotal foundations to building the new PICs.
Beginning M&A at Arista
At Arista, we have led both the disruption and evolution of networking technology as entrepreneurs with proven customer success. The pride and passion for best of breed designs and foolproof quality principles has driven Arista’s core values and success. Getting it right, doing the right thing and defining what is “right” is a constant learning process. Sometimes this means complementing core products with the right mergers and acquisitions to boost Arista’s customer and platform impact.
Microsoft and Arista Cloud Decade
As we celebrate the 5thAnniversary of Arista’s IPO this week at NYSE, we pause to reflect on this key milestone. Arista’s results are a tribute to the customers who chose us, appreciated our innovative technology and stood by us through our highs and lows. One key customer who played a pivotal part in the decade was Microsoft. Microsoft coincidentally was destined to be a part of our journey since 2008 when we were searching for a new name for our company. Our top choice was Azure, but the domain name was taken just a few weeks before we started our naming effort. Since then, Microsoft redefined the public cloud with Azure and Arista has become a critical foundation to enabling the scale, reach, reliability, and performance that have become synonymous with the Azure cloud.
Open Cloud Networking-Redefined
Networking vendors have long touted distinct routers and switches with different LAN/WAN interfaces for different customer use cases. After three decades of evolution, Ethernet now truly addresses all aspects of the present state and the next generation of networking, making it possible to support these previously separate use cases from a single common platform, which flexibly incorporates new capabilities in an open, standards-based approach. Arista, together with an ecosystem of partners including Broadcom and Cloud Titan customers, has a history of collaborating in many industry forums to define these new networking capabilities, including OCP, 25/50G and COBO, while driving next generation optics such as OSFP and QSFP-DD.
Tech Time is Real Time
Silicon Valley is both an addiction and passion where entrepreneurs seek the realm of the impossible. Real-time language translation, fraud detection, and autonomous vehicle control are being addressed through the use of neural network models, detecting patterns and behaviors across massive amounts of structured and unstructured data. Indeed, change is not only a constant progression in Silicon Valley, it is a continuum in time. Every piece of traditional technology has to imminently become smarter, challenged or be eliminated. While this transformation is especially true for entrepreneurs, invention is not limited to start-ups. I have witnessed several waves of evolution and revolution during my journey in Silicon Valley in both high-tech and networking.
Cognitive Campus – Next Frontier
Arista’s focus on disruption, with datacenters and routing, transforming siloed places in the network to seamless Places In the Cloud (PICs) has been well appreciated by our customers. Our cloud networking decade has been achieved by upholding these cloud principles and I believe these trends will influence cognitive campus PICs. Legacy campus networks suffer from a similar complexity of too many layers, boxes, cables, operating systems, proprietary features and network management choices. A change is very much needed and welcome in the 2020 era.
Rethinking Security in Cloud Networking
Every CXO worries about security because the perimeter is changing; in fact, there are no walls for protection. The lines between cloud, workloads, applications, enterprise networks and hosts are blurring and the challenges are getting exponentially greater. The true security architect must rapidly address the reality of a more holistic network-wide security strategy. It must be one that goes beyond the cyber threat of the day to address the risk, scale and mitigation of persistent security issues. The state of cyber security needs urgent resolution because:
