Arista Jumps into Open Networking — or Do They?
On March 31 Arista announced it will offer its EOS operating system as a subscription license separate from its switch hardware. While the rest of the industry is realizing disaggregation of hardware and software for the sake of customer choice and innovation, Arista’s “disaggregation” is only a new pricing model. Arista hardware and its EOS operating system remain locked. Customer choice is limited to pricing models.
That is not open networking. And it’s not what customers need. This is an open pricing model at the best.
Currently Arista sells its hardware and software as a single bundle, but with this new pricing model, Arista claims it gives customers a better way to balance their CapEx and OpEx budgets. Arista also says this will let customers scale their cloud deployments as they want, paying for their network resources only as they consume them and — given the subscription service — helping them avoid exorbitant upfront investments.
Disaggregation?
Is Arista opening their pricing model because of growing industry support for open networking? Their announcement nods towards a “disaggregated offering,” but EOS still requires Arista hardware, and Arista switches still require EOS. Customers can buy the hardware/software components separately, but they still can’t Continue reading