Has the controller already become commoditized?
Because open source is pretty new for the network industry at large. Open vSwitch (OVS) has been around for a years now and although Cisco does contribute to OVS now, it was initially largely led and created by Nicira. On the other hand, it is Cisco leading the charge for OpenDaylight. Because of that, it will get much more attention from the traditional communities of the network industry from users and operators to resellers and solution providers.
The vibe I am getting is that vendors want integrators to step up and support an open source platform like this, but this is not business as usual by any means. Typically, both customers and integrators rely on that official support/SmartNet SKU to resell just in case there is a problem.
I recently wrote here about CloudScaling, and they are worth mentioning again. They are already selling and supporting their own Cloud Platform based on OpenStack. Projects like OpenDaylight bring more opportunity for companies like them who aren’t necessarily relying on vendor support, but contributing code and offering their own product based on major releases/distributions of open source projects.
Just as incumbent vendors are figuring out their strategy and startups are emerging with new technologies, the same holds true for services-lead organization like Solution Providers/Integrators, and then product/services companies like CloudScaling. Incumbents will likely adapt while more companies like CloudScaling emerge.
As this happens, what does this mean for the vendors and their own software solutions?
Thanks,
Jason
Twitter: @jedelman8