SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 30, 2014) - Big Switch Networks, the company bringing hyperscale networking to data centers worldwide, today shipped the first orders of its flagship product, Big Cloud Fabric (BCF), the industry's first and only data center switching fabric based on bare metal ethernet switch hardware and SDN software. Announced in July, Big Cloud Fabric has already secured more than $1 million in related pre- FCS orders, along with a stream of positive product reviews.
"Shipping Big Cloud Fabric represents an incredibly important milestone for our company," said Douglas Murray, CEO, Big Switch Networks. "We met an aggressive timeline and are getting great reviews from customers and partners who have been testing the product. Initial customers' purchases range from 2 racks to 16 racks, with up to 16K VMs. I couldn't be happier with the Big Switch team and their execution."
Initial orders are coming at a time when the market for solutions based on bare metal ethernet switch hardware is accelerating. Infonetics' Cliff Grossner reported that bare metal [whitebox] switch revenue in 2Q14 was up 95% year over year.
In response to growing market demand for bare metal switch hardware, Big Switch now offers a Big Cloud Fabric starter kit. Listed at $99,000 USD, the kit includes 4 leaf and 2 spine bare metal switches (10GE/40GE), redundant controller appliances, a three-year Big Cloud Fabric software license, three years of hardware/software support, and 40GE leaf-spine cables. Product details are available here.
The product is being showcased as part of Interop New York's InteropNet SDN Lab, where it will be shown interoperating with SDN offerings from eight other organizations. More information on Interop New York's InteropNet SDN Lab is available here.
The Next Major Release of Big Tap 4.0 Now Shipping:
The company also shipped Big Tap 4.0 on August 15 as planned -- it's being deployed by Global 2000 customers in the U.S. and Asia spanning high tech, financial services, telecommunications equipment suppliers, and mobile service providers. Release 4.0 expands the market for Big Tap with support for new use cases where proprietary Network Packet Brokers alternatives can be too complex and expensive, such as tapping every rack and tapping every remote location. The release has a rich filtering feature set including deeper packet matching, applicable for tunneled packets such as those found in mobile protocols and VXLAN. It also provides additional compatible hardware choices, including Dell open networking hardware as well as Accton/Edge-Core based Trident II switches. Details available here.
New Japan Leadership:
In addition, with Big Tap and Big Cloud Fabric in market and growth accelerating, the company is also announcing expansion in Japan under a new Director of Sales, Ucheol Ryu. Ryu-san, an industry veteran, has held senior sales and channel roles at SAP, Citrix, Cisco, and IBM. He will work closely with partners in Japan including CTC, NetOne Systems, and Uniadex. Under his guidance, Big Switch is planning increased investment in the region in response to rapidly accelerating demand due to Japanese large enterprises and mobile operators embracing SDN technologies and hyperscale network designs.
More on Big Cloud Fabric:
Big Cloud Fabric is the industry's first and only data center switching fabric that combines the operational advantages of SDN software with the economics of bare metal switch hardware. The product is designed for new pods in existing data centers, typically part of private cloud, big data, and VDI projects.
A data center pod built with the Big Cloud Fabric features i) a modern application/tenant centric configuration, ii) a massive reduction in management consoles required for day-to-day management, iii) integrated workflows for networking/security/audit teams (starting with OpenStack), and iv) industry-leading CapEx savings.
Big Cloud Fabric leverages the company's Switch Light Operating System on physical leaf and spine bare metal switch hardware and supports the latest Trident II silicon from Broadcom. The leaf/spine fabric appears as a single logical switch, and is controlled by the Big Cloud Fabric Controller. It is designed for 10G and 40G scale and resiliency, featuring headless mode high availability, zero-touch fabric operations, L2/3 forwarding options, application-centric policy, and service chaining. It supports multi-hypervisor environments (vSphere, Hyper-V, KVM, and Xen) and management is available via OpenStack, Cloudstack, REST, CLI, or GUI. Product Details are available here.
Supporting Quotes:
"The innovators in data center networking over the last five years have primarily been the hyperscale players," said Douglas Murray, CEO, Big Switch Networks. "Our mission is to bring this hyperscale design to data centers worldwide, enabling companies to achieve improved operational efficiency and delivering on the original promise of SDN. Hyperscale networking focuses on simplicity and cost savings, and isn't simply a vision for the future -- it is shipping and available today."
"I am excited to welcome Ucheol Ryu to the Big Switch team as Director of Sales," said Shaun Page, Vice President of Worldwide Sales, Big Switch Networks. "Ryu-san has an impeccable track record in sales, channel, and marketing roles. His unique blend of infrastructure, application, and software experience will help Big Switch become a market leader in Japan."
"I had a demo of the near-final product last week and I'm seriously impressed with the solution. I worked through my SDN checklist of questions, there were very few things that didn't have answers." - Greg Ferro, EtherealMind / Packet Pushers
"If you don't like playing with the big vendors, this is a huge deal, because Big Switch is bringing to bare metal the same kind of integrated management as is being offered by the other fabrics out there... This could be very disruptive for the big player's fabric offerings." - John Hebert, LameJournal / Networking Field Day Delegate
"From the technology presentation standpoint, the Big Switch offering is quite impressive." - Nick Buraglio, ForwardingPlane
"Networking has seen more architectural innovation in the last few years than in the past two decades as companies look to create more agile, flexible networks with SDN," said Brian Marshall, former analyst, ISI Group. "However, making the leap to new hyperscale SDN solutions can be challenging for organizations with legacy infrastructure. Big Tap offers a simple, high-value entry point for customers to warm up to SDN and get comfortable. Now Big Cloud Fabric at the core can help mitigate risk for customers and enable a seamless transition to SDN."
"With Big Switch's solutions our government customers will now have the ability to run demanding data-center networks at scale on bare-metal infrastructure," said Greg Shipley, Vice President at IQT, the strategic investment firm that works to identify, adapt, and deliver innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the U.S. Intelligence Community. "Working with Big Switch's enterprise-hardened SDN technology means we're getting refreshing simplicity in the deployment and management of networks, while having the flexibility to scale up to satisfy large and diverse workloads."
Tweet this: With $1m in bookings already, @bigswitch kicks off October by shipping the first orders of Big Cloud Fabric today
About Big Switch Networks:
Big Switch Networks is the market leader in bringing hyperscale data center networking technologies to a broader audience. The company is taking three key hyperscale technologies -- OEM/ODM bare metal and open Ethernet switch hardware, sophisticated SDN control software, and core-and-pod data center designs -- and leveraging them in fit-for-purpose products designed for use in enterprises, cloud providers, and service providers. The company's Big Tap Monitoring Fabric is an entry level solution to monitor existing networks, and the flagship Big Cloud Fabric is the industry's most advanced bare metal switching fabric intended for new data center pods such as private cloud, big data, and VDI. For additional information, email info@bigswitch.com, follow @bigswitch, or visit www.bigswitch.com.
Big Switch Networks, Big Cloud Fabric, Big Tap, Switch Light OS, and Switch Light vSwitch are trademarks or registered trademarks of Big Switch Networks, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered marks, or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners.
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