Best-of-breed networking: There’s an opportunity for white boxes in the WAN
Everyone wants the best network, so they say, but as usual with “bestness” goals, there’s not much agreement on how to achieve it. Do you go for best-of-breed in your equipment, or maybe for three vendors per product area, or maybe open white-box networks? A bit over three-quarters of enterprises said in 2020 that open networks and white boxes would give them best of breed options, but what’s happened since then seems like a blast from the past, vendor-wise.
Let’s start with an interesting truth. Well over 95% of established enterprises who can look back to the origins of their networks say that they started off with a single-vendor network. Enterprises who launched within the last five years (which are very few) account for almost all those who didn’t start off with one vendor. If you think about it, this is logical, because starting off with networking is daunting enough without adding in the complication of network integration and the management of multiple sources of technology.