Arista simplifies switching to its campus network

Arista has made it easier to switch from a rival's campus network.

On Tuesday, Arista introduced technology for managing legacy stacked switches through Extensible Operating System (EOS), the company's network operating system. EOS uses the Ethernet protocol to group and manage individual switches through a single IP address.

Switches installed years ago in campus networking closets typically use proprietary links for stacking, requiring IT staff to manage the hardware through its CLI instead of through modern software.

Companies often refuse to replace legacy stacked switches for various reasons, including cost, the risk of disrupting the network and regulatory compliance. Also, legacy systems sometimes meet business requirements reliably.

To reach those potential customers, Arista added a switch aggregation group capability to EOS. SWAG combines multiple network connections into a single logical link, which is an Ethernet link in Arista's case.

"We are starting to run into opportunities where customers want to get out of the other vendor, but they have been deploying stacking for years, if not decades, and they need a seamless way to migrate from the old to the new," said Kumar Srikantan, vice president and general manager of cloud fabric networking at Arista.

SWAG is friendly to Arista's leaf-spine architecture for campus networks, said Shamus McGillicuddy, an analyst with Enterprise Management Associates.

"SWAG won't disrupt operations because it behaves similarly to legacy approaches from a management perspective," McGillicuddy said.

The leaf-spine architecture is a modern, two-tier network topology in the data center that some vendors use for the campus. Cisco and Juniper Networks also support it in their campus networks.

Arista provides management functions for legacy stacked switches within the leaf-spine stack management capabilities of CloudVision, the company's cloud-based network management console. However, companies can choose to continue managing switches through their CLIs.

Arista argues that SWAG will reduce costs. Legacy stacking supports up to 10 switches, while Arista's use of SWAG lets enterprises have multiple stacks of up to 48 switches on a single IP address.

Enterprises typically use multiple network management tools that vendors license based on the number of IP addresses associated with the network devices. Having more switches on a single address should reduce cost, Srikantan said.

Roughly 30% of Arista's 10,000 customers license its wired and wireless LAN for the campus, Srikantan said. The company entered the market in 2018 by acquiring Mojo Networks, a provider of cloud-managed wireless networking.

In the second quarter of 2024, more than 90% of Arista's Ethernet switch revenue came from the data center, according to IDC. Arista has set a target of $750 million in revenue next year from its campus networking segment.

Antone Gonsalves is an editor at large for TechTarget Editorial, reporting on industry trends critical to enterprise tech buyers. He has worked in tech journalism for 25 years and is based in San Francisco. Have a news tip? Please drop him an email.