Big Switch Networks Founder Forster On Partner Opportunities In A Pumped-Up Portfolio

"When we started Big Switch 10 years ago, this was the entire vision of SDN," said Big Switch Networks founder Kyle Forster.

The Vision

Kyle Forster, founder of software-defined networking pioneer Big Switch Networks, says the new capabilities and products introduced in its Cloud First Networking Portfolio give customers the kind of data center experience they've been hungry for, and present solution providers with a powerful hybrid cloud value proposition.

The Cloud First portfolio updates Big Switch's existing Big Cloud Fabric and Big Monitoring Fabric solutions, and introduces several new products all geared toward giving on-premises data center customers an experience that mirrors the ease and flexibility of the public cloud.

"It's like on-prem versions of [Microsoft] Azure or AWS networking capabilities, and we're first to market," Forster said. "It lets you run your on-premises data network as if it were on Azure. When we started Big Switch 10 years ago, this was the entire vision of SDN."

Still, the bulk of Big Switch's partner base – made up of solution providers that work with the company's closest vendor-partners Dell EMC and HPE – focuses primarily on traditional data center deals. Forster said the new portfolio gives those partners the ability to introduce cloud to those customers.

"If a partner one day shows up and says, hey, I know you think of me as the box-by-box configuration service, but now I'm the migration to [Virtual Private Cloud] service, you're just playing at a different level. I believe there's margin there."

What follows is an edited excerpt of Forster's conversation with CRN.

What's included in the Cloud First Networking Portfolio?

First is new capabilities for on-premise switching, which lets you support cloud networking. It's like on-prem versions of Azure or AWS networking capabilities, and we're first to market. It lets you run your on-premises data network as if it were on Azure. When we started Big Switch 10 years ago, this was the entire vision of SDN. Switching product. We're also taking our controller and putting it on Amazon. That'll be done by November, so we'll have our monitoring fabric controller on-prem; our switching controller on-prem; our monitoring controllers in the cloud; and our switching controllers in the cloud.

How are you building on Big Switch's analytics capabilities?

The monitoring product is existing. In April we launched the analytics component of the monitoring product that lets you do on-premises versions of Amazon and Azure network analytics. We're building on that. We're taking the analytics node and monitoring fabric and putting that on Amazon and Azure. People want consistency of monitoring between on-prem and cloud. That's in beta, and it will come out later this year. Toward the end of the year, we're launching multi-cloud director, and that's a system to manage many controllers across many sites on-prem and across many regions in the cloud.

How do Big Switch partners make margin on the new offerings?

A lot of our partners are considered on-premise only. This is an opportunity for them to branch out into hybrid cloud projects. We think for partners that's a really big deal. We're really trying hard to have them transition from on-prem into cloud without sacrificing the position they have with their customers today. We're trying to take a really different approach. We're a challenger out there. We're not one of the big incumbents. We're taking a totally different approach and saying, hey, look, let's take the stuff that's working in the cloud and bring it on-prem.

That probably presents a good opportunity for partners when it comes to things like migration services, lifecycle services, etc.?

I think so. If somebody talks about migration of VPC, if a partner one day shows up and says, hey, I know you think of me as the box-by-box configuration service, but now I'm the migration to VPC service, you're just playing at a different level. I believe there's margin there.

Are customers that made a big move to public cloud coming back on-prem?

I'll give you a quote from a customer who said this when we weren't even in the room. He said, 'It's 2017, and I chose Big Switch because Big Switch was the closest I could get to Amazon on-prem.' That quote went viral, in his organization, with the Dell partners that were working with him on it, and within Dell, and then came back to us. We had never articulated what we do that way, and that's kind of the genesis story for how this Cloud First Portfolio got started. He said that in 2017.

What did that customer's environment look like then, and what does it look like now?

In the beginning of 2018, they had 44 racks of Big Switch in production. The proposal we have for 2019 moves the next 700 racks over to Big Switch. Their initial plan was to move 100 percent up to Amazon in early 2016. In 2017, they saw there was a whole lot they could do with us on-premises. Now, about 30 percent of what they do will end up on Amazon and about 60 percent of it is going to stay on-prem.

What's driving that kind of kind decision-making among customers? Are customers ahead of partners when it comes to hybrid cloud?

I think you have to rewind the clock about five years. There's just been an explosion of innovative products for the data center. Products now are much faster to set up. They're much less expensive. They're much simpler to operate. The infrastructure community is responding to competition from the public cloud, which has made better, faster, cheaper products. If I was [a customer] in 2014, and I saw what it cost for data center products, I would've said put everything on Amazon now.

How much of the new portfolio will be sold through your big alliance partners, Dell EMC and HPE?

We have the Dell relationship, the HPE relationship, and we have about 100 independent VARs. Our strategic goal is to be very balanced between the Dell reseller ecosystem, the HPE reseller ecosystem, and the independent ecosystem.