Big Switch updates its Cloud-First Networking portfolio

Big Switch Networks, a network virtualization and software-defined networking company based in California, added new hybrid cloud networking products and features to its Cloud-First Networking portfolio.

According to the vendor, the offerings are intended to tackle problems such as lack of operational consistency, visibility and management in hybrid environments, and shadow IT. The new products and features include the following.

Big Cloud Fabric (BCF) Controller for AWS public cloud:

• offers visibility and control of Amazon Virtual Private Clouds for IT teams, including discovery, visualization and troubleshooting VPCs for multiple user accounts;
• ensures operational compliance in a NetOps, CloudOps, DevOps multiteam environment; and
• is available in both free and premium versions.

Global VPCs (G-VPCs) for hybrid cloud network as a service:

• enables multi-tenant Naas across hybrid cloud;
• extends across deployments, such as data centers, edge clouds and multiple public clouds;
• provides a single API interface for global hybrid cloud services deployment and management; and
• is capable of instantiating hybrid cloud tenants with any underlying network type.

Multi-Cloud Director - Cloud Service (MCD-CS) for hybrid cloud management, a new cloud-based service version of Big Switch's MCD:

• enables secured access and operation abilities for IT teams, including operating BCF deployments from MCD's multi-tenant cloud dashboard; and
• provides hybrid cloud intelligence that offers capacity planning, design best practices, automatic security alerts, scheduled upgrades and infrastructure consistency.

Automated deployment across hybrid cloud:

• automatically deploys VPCs and G-VPCs across hybrid cloud using the open source cloud automation tool Terraform.

Expected synergies with AWS Outposts:

• As long as Outposts will be an extension of AWS and support AWS Marketplace tools, IT teams would be able to manage Outposts' VPCs and extend IT governance with BCF for AWS.
• MCD and MCD-CS offer a single dashboard for managing BCF Enterprise VPCs and G-VPCs on premises in AWS and on Outposts.

Big Switch Networks offers data center switching, visibility and analytics products for on-premises clouds, public clouds and multi-cloud environments and receives funding from venture capital firms, including Dell Technologies Capital, Index Ventures and Intel Capital, according to the vendor.

Its competitors in the data center networking market include Cisco, VMware and Juniper Networks, which also offer multi-cloud and automated products for enterprises. All of these vendors were listed in Gartner's 2019 Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking.