Intel vs. Arista: Networking Market Is Still Healthy

Industry watchers have been busy analyzing recent earnings reports from technology bellwethers. Intel reporting worse than expected results last week and revising year-end guidance sent some red flags to the industry. The slowdown in the chip economy will affect all downstream vendors of devices that rely on these basic building blocks of tech. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said Intel continues to deal with Covid-related supply shortages that have delayed product availability.

Other Intel executives offered insights into problems in specific market segments. In a CNBC interview, Intel Chief Financial Officer David Zisner said that small and medium-sized businesses have slowed down purchasing, but the enterprise has been holding up.

To confirm this notion, enterprise networking vendor Arista Networks announced their first Billion Dollar Quarter, surpassing Wall Street’s estimates. “In Q2 2022, we achieved our first billion-dollar revenue quarter, despite the challenges of an uncertain supply-chain environment,” said Arista Networks CEO Jayshree Ullal, in a statement. Arista also raised their guidance for the third quarter, as a show of confidence in the growth of the enterprise networking market.

Networking continues to be a growth story, even in these adverse business conditions. The reasons why are pretty self-evident: Although the global pandemic has changed many things about our daily lives, the dependence on robust infrastructures and communications technologies is ever present.

While the omnipresent black-box networking vendors tend to be darlings of the media, flexible networking is as relevant to the industry today as ever. In fact, Network Operating System (NOS) vendor Pluribus Networks was acquired by Arista, and was referenced in their earnings statement as being one of the key drivers of growth in the future.

Pica8 is the flexible networking alternative to Juniper, Cisco and Arista, and to this day remains as one of the last hardware-independent vendors of Network Operating Systems and products for flexible networking.

Pica8 was recently recognized as a market Leader by the technology analyst group GigaOm in their annual NOS report. Other leaders in the category include Pluribus Networks, IP Infusion and Infinera. 

Interestingly, all of the companies in the Leader group ranked ahead of Arista Networks.

PicaNotes

Cloud-based telecom services provider 2600Hz replaced Cumulus Linux with Pica8 for use in their data centers. Pica8 PicOS Software Switches provide operating support for an array of spine-leaf switches on Edgecore networking hardware. Flexible networking software ensures 2600Hz can maintain their choice of hardware devices, with complete support. Read the complete case study here.