Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

The Biggest Thing Since Ethernet: OpenFlow: Page 3 of 3

What Will Cisco Do?

It's not hard to imagine why industry heavyweights would be wary of efforts to remove the brainpower from their devices and put it on centralized controllers. That Cisco and other networking vendors enjoy fat profit margins on routers and switches has everything to do with their providing the network hardware, software, and--more often than not--management tools. A fair analogy is the margins earned by Oracle/Sun, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard on their proprietary Unix systems vs. the margins on their x86 servers. In the x86 world, Intel, Microsoft, and VMware, not hardware makers, earn the fat margins.

OpenFlow has received enthusiastic support from enterprise-centric networking vendors such as Extreme and NEC, with NEC and startup BigSwitch the first out of the gate with controllers. Both Juniper and Cisco are participating in the Open Network Foundation but have yet to announce products supporting the standard. Brocade is an enthusiastic supporter but views telecom carrier networks and very large Internet businesses as the most likely first customers.

At some point, though, the heavyweights may have no choice but to offer OpenFlow-based enterprise products, too. Broadcom and Marvell, which make the chips for many switches, both support OpenFlow. So whether Cisco likes it or not, enterprise customers will have the option of buying affordable, quality products that support the standard.

OpenFlow doesn't necessarily doom leaders like Cisco. If Broadcom and Marvell become the Intel and AMD for the enterprise switching market, Cisco can recast itself as Microsoft or VMware. No one understands the complex issues of managing traffic like Cisco does, and if it were to position itself as the premier maker of network controllers in an OpenFlow world, its customers would gladly grant it that status. Cisco won't let another company assume that role. If it doesn't embrace OpenFlow, it'll at least try to offer a proprietary equivalent.

However the move to software- defined networks plays out, Cisco in particular has a strong hand to play. Its already tight relationship with VMware and its leadership positions in both storage networking and data networking will make Cisco hard to beat.

The transition to software-defined networks will happen, but predicting the timing is much trickier. There's no backward compatibility for OpenFlow or any other SDN scheme. Fundamental hardware changes are required to make SDNs perform at high speeds. Cisco paints itself as cautiously enthusiastic about OpenFlow. Indeed, if it can see a way to remain the preferred switch vendor with healthy margins, all while supporting OpenFlow, Cisco may see the technology as the magic bullet that forces a networking hardware refresh faster than the current five- to eight-year cycle. Meanwhile, other relationships are moving ahead. NEC, for example, is developing an OpenFlow virtual switch for use with Windows Server 8 and Microsoft's Hyper-V server virtualization software.

The final and most unpredictable variable in this equation are network management teams themselves. After being well served for 30 years by Ethernet and TCP/IP's fundamental protocols, they'll move very cautiously to software-defined networks and centralized controller schemes.

In some environments, where massive data centers and highly parallel throughput server farms are the norm, the transformation can't happen fast enough. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Yahoo are all members of the Open Network Foundation driving OpenFlow. For those with more pedestrian setups, getting comfortable with an SDN will take some time.

All Articles In This Cover Story: