Arista Networks

When big guns from Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems start up a networking company, it is probably sensible to pay attention. Andy Bechtolsheim (of Sun) and Jayshree Ullal (from Cisco) are the two leading lights behind Arista Networks, which started shipping products in May.

Arista Networks is making 10 Gigabit switches. It is a space that is already surprisingly crowded, from Force10 and Foundry Networks to Cisco Systems. GigaOm and The New York Times have pieces on Arista. Andy Bechtolsheim has an incredible track record of creating and selling companies in the space (including Granite Systems, which gave Cisco its jump start into the LAN space).

It sounds like they are bringing Juniper Network’s “modular software” mantra to the Ethernet switch space - a space that Juniper Networks have also entered recently. The target environment is cloud data centres, where uptime demands and traffic loads are high. One to watch.