News

Big Switch Takes Cloud Networking Services On-Premises

• By David Ramel
• 07/30/2018

Big Switch Networks is taking "as-a-Service" virtual networking functionality available in public cloud platforms to on-premises implementations.

The software-defined networking (SDN) specialist announced new sofware-centric, on-premises-flavored services as part of its new Cloud-First Networking (CFN) portfolio, which features three new in-cloud products designed to accelerate hybrid cloud networking.

"Big Switch’s CFN portfolio addresses hybrid cloud networking design challenges, by bringing the best of public cloud networking on-premises, in contrast to hardware-centric vendors’ approaches that start with adapting legacy on-premises products for use in public clouds," the company said in a statement earlier this month. "The company is the first to launch key cloud networking features on-prem, with a portfolio that builds from there with corresponding in-cloud products and culminates in a multi-cloud management system."

According to Big Switch's founder, the new porfolio originated from an off-hand remark from a customer.

"An architect at one of our customers made a passing comment -- 'I chose Big Switch because it was the closest we could get to Amazon networking on-premises' -- and it went viral," said Kyle Forster, founder of Big Switch. "He kicked off our journey to Cloud-First Networking. It just clicked ... this is what we have to do. It is an exciting time to be in networking.”

The company contrasted its software-centric approach to addressing hybrid cloud networking design challenges to that of hardware-centric approaches that start with adapting legacy on-premises products for use in public cloud platforms like AWS, Microsoft's Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

Its on-premises solutions include Big Cloud Fabric - Enterprise Cloud (BCF-EC) and Big Monitoring Fabric - Enterprise Cloud (BMF-EC), whose public cloud networking and monitoring features supporting on-premises workloads are being updated in the next software release.

Along with those updates, Big Switch announced two new public cloud products: Big Cloud Fabric - Public Cloud (BCF-PC) and Big Monitoring Fabric - Public Cloud (BMF-PC) for corresponding in-cloud deployments.

Another new offering is Multi-Cloud Director, described as a system for consistent hybrid design across on-premises sites, across cloud platforms and across on-premises/in-cloud combinations of networking and monitoring fabrics.

"Specifically, CFN starts with Enterprise VPCs, an on-prem version of the key feature of public cloud networks implemented by Amazon (VPCs), Azure (vNets) and Google Cloud Platform (VPCs)," the company said in a statement earlier this month. "VPCs bring as-a-Service operations to networking in-cloud and now on-prem. With VPCs everywhere, coupled with automation everywhere and flow-analytics everywhere, CFN is eliminating the on-prem/in-cloud networking inconsistencies that have been a key impediment to seamless hybrid cloud adoption."

BMF-EC with flow and packet visibility is generally available now, with GA expected for the other products in Q3 and Q4 of this year.

More information is provided in overviews for Multi-Cloud Director, Big Cloud Fabric-Public Cloud, Big Monitoring Fabric-Public Cloud, Big Cloud Fabric-Enterprise Cloud and Big Monitoring Fabric-Enterprise Cloud.