{"id":70052,"date":"2014-06-19T21:56:32","date_gmt":"2014-06-20T01:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbachnet.wwwmi3-ss40.a2hosted.com\/index.php\/"},"modified":"2022-08-15T14:17:24","modified_gmt":"2022-08-15T18:17:24","slug":"facebook-challenges-cisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/facebook-challenges-cisco\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Challenges Cisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FacebookJulie Bort<\/a> at the BusinessInsider<\/em><\/a> says<\/a> Facebook<\/a> is challenging the stagnate<\/a> network giant Cisco<\/a>\u00a0(CSCO<\/a>). Facebook’s<\/a>\u00a0(FB<\/a>)\u00a0Najam Ahmad<\/a>, leader of the OCP networking project announced a product that should have Cisco shaking in its boots. Mr. Ahmad told<\/a> the New York Times, \u201cThe bigger strategy here is to get computer networking out of the black box, black operations part of the world.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Facebook<\/a>Facebook<\/strong> introduced the new top-of-rack Wedge switch in 2013. <\/strong>The Wedge release made good FB’s promise to disrupt the $23 billion Ethernet switch market<\/strong>, now dominated by Cisco<\/strong>. Wedge is part of the Open Compute Project<\/a><\/strong> (OCP). The author says is OCP one of the most important tech projects Facebook has ever created. OCP began in 2012 as a radically new way to build and buy computer hardware. It creates free and “open source<\/a><\/strong>” designs where anyone can contribute to the designs and use them for free.<\/p>\n

Open Compute Project<\/h3>\n

The hardware OCP designs range from computer servers<\/a> to hard drives<\/a> to the racks<\/a> that hold them all. While Facebook still leads the project, it has grown into an industry phenom<\/strong>. In 2013, the article says Facebook saved “over $1 billion” by using the hardware invented by Facebook.<\/p>\n

\"Cisco<\/a>And a year ago, OCP announced plans to build a network switch. And not just any network switch, but one designed as a software-defined networking<\/a><\/strong> (SDN<\/a>) device. BI<\/em> explains that SDN is a new way to build networks that threaten Cisco, or at least Cisco’s 60+% profit margins. SDN takes the fancy features baked into network equipment \u2013 things like security, management \u2013 and puts them into the software. This turns the hardware into something that dumbly moves bits of information around. The hardware switch becomes easier to move around and manage, and far less expensive<\/strong>, all things that cloud computing does better.<\/p>\n

Software-defined networking<\/h3>\n

Cisco has already recently released its own SDN product line Cisco Open Network Environment<\/a> (ONE)<\/span>. Ms. Bort (and others<\/a><\/em>) contend these products encourage customers to keep buying Cisco’s high-performance but expensive gear by including features that will only work with said Cisco’s products. No doubt many enterprises will want that. But Facebook’s switch is a threat for a lot of reasons.<\/p>\n