Cisco: HP’s White Box Switches Show ‘Lack Of Confidence’

Cisco has said that HP’s rollout of a white box open architecture switch range this week “brings into question a lack of confidence, traction and innovation,” according to an email sent to TechWeekEurope.

It was yesterday when Hewlett-Packard announced a line of open network switches for the scalable data centre, claiming that the range is perfectly suited for the flexibility needed for cloud, mobile, social media and Big Data workloads.

HP brite box

HP’s new products are branded white box switches, known as brite box switches, and come shortly after Cisco dismissed the need for the white box market in the switch world.

Cisco’s Thomas Scheibe, director of project management, said: “The main appeal of a “white box” is not pricing, but rather the open systems platform which can integrate into automation tools.

“White box or merchant silicon-based switching is not a new phenomenon: in fact today Cisco delivers the most widely deployed merchant silicon data center platform with its Nexus 3000 series switches. Eight of the 10 largest Internet companies in the world are Cisco customers.”

Cisco also used the email to highlight its own stance on branded switches. Cisco said: “Cisco’s next generation switches provide an open standards platform while maintaining Cisco benefits such as supply chain flexibility, services, and global support. Customers understand that the white box model presents a cost tradeoff – capex may be lower, but opex will be higher.”

“The success of this strategy is borne out by Cisco’s recently released Q2 earnings switching and data centre results.”

It was last week when Cisco CEO John Chambers dismissed white box rivals in an earning conference call. Chambers said: “We are seeing no unusual competition in the market, no unusual competition with white-label or white-box [vendors], nor will we in the future.”

UPDATE

HP has responded to Cisco’s white box bashing.The company has said:

“In contrast to Cisco, HP is listening to our customers and investing in the future. HP continues to lead the innovation curve in SDN, merchant silicon and software licensing and we intend to do the same with the solutions we offered today. All the while Cisco remains focused on keeping their customer base captive.”

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