The White Box Obsession in Enterprise Networking - An Attempt to Put End to The Madness

Network Disaggregation & White Box switching are one of those Talk of the Town things for quite some time. There are lot of startups in this space or niche players is one of those over hyped marketing terms to address that segment of OEMs besides other ones such as SDN, IBN & Cloud.

At surface they seem to bring couple of new factors into the equation which at first sounds very innovative such as:

Your Networking Hardware should be treated as Commodity similar to Server market. So idea is simple, you should be able to buy any X-86 based Networking gear and should be able to run NOS (Network Operating System) on top of your choice. In theory the NOS could be purpose built to meet your specific needs. So again , in theory you should end up paying for only the features of Entire NOS that you are using. Which at surface seems bit different from the way you used to pay to Networking Vendors in past. 

So essentially in theory you end up with:

1. Cheaper Hardware
2. Standardized HW which run on x-86 Architecture instead of on Proprietary Vendor Chipset
3. NOS (Open Source or Vendor NOS) that you can run on Whitebox
4. In theory NOS should also be cheaper as you might only pay for what you use

So on surface those promises are very interesting indeed. 

But...

If that's the case, why Whitebox idea is not that successful so far at least in Enterprise Segment ? 

Well let's look deeper and travel back into time to find some details. Where probably it all started ?

Well it started as different movements at different places. Some old school of thoughts around SDN are good starting points, it's just one of interpretation what SDN means for many still.

At the same time Webscales of the world were having different problems to address:

1. Pace of innovation - Now though Innovation interestingly is one of those over hyped and overly abused terms just like Digital Transformation. Let's say in simple terms in our context it means at what pace I can build features and function or integrations. 

Let's say your specific environment needs some very specific Add ONs on top of an existing feature (Though in theory you might want a new feature). Now this was and probably still is one of the most important consideration for large webscales and cloud providers as requesting these add on or features to vendors takes lot of time usually. The vendor on the flip side might not be at fault if you are big enough and giving them enough business or the frequency of these kinds of requests is not high enough. The moment you don't find that right balance, your requests will likely be pushed back or thrown onto potential road-map presentation slide.

The another roadblock could be compliance and privacy on both sides seen as an issue under co-innovation. 

But do you want to go that far as an average Enterprise ?

2. Who wants to keep the Control - Now this can also be looked at through different lenses and innovation can be seen as just a subset of it. 

Now let's look at simple perspective here:

Q: Who Pays your bills ?
A: Business/Job

Q: How Business makes money ?
A: By running Apps which are managed through People & Process which helps it make some money

Now you must understand that how fundamentally Webscales are different from Enterprises. At very basic level Webscales build applications first and later design and build infra to best suit those Apps. Also most APPs are written by Webscale staff itself.

On the flip side:
Most Enterprises have lot of Organic Growth. Where in you Build Infra first (The minimum capability) and run applications on top which in most cases are sourced from Vendors. So :

A. We pick infra first and later try to best lay applications on top.
B. You as an Enterprise don't have much access to make changes to Apps itself for most part. Depending upon your size you can either go through same cycle which I described under Point 1 or You can create and build abstractions on top which brings another set of complexities and considerations into the mix. 

3. Platform Independence - Now while the idea sounds interesting and marketing really seems to have done its job well on different social media platforms. Think deeply if it makes any difference in your context or if Networking Gear vs. Server Gear really needs to be compared. Try to map it back to your Organisation's IT strategy and see if it makes any sense. Another interesting problem here could be :

- If something breaks and you don't know if it's HW or SW, How you stop finger pointing which is one of Operational Challenge you may face. Now the possible argument could be Whitebox vendor eco-system as an answer to this problem. But wait, were we not looking complete independence here though Disaggregation ? So that's another tradeoff if you look closer.

4. Cheaper Hardware & NOS - Well x-86 boxes being cheaper looks promising. But you must understand most of your current vendors don't make money from selling Hardware anyways for most part. Depending upon your size as Customer and loyalty you bring on the table for your respective OEM, I have seen discounts anywhere between 60% - 80% and in exceptional cases 90% to 100% depending upon the play. A good example would be Vendor being into Software lead Networking solutions space. The vendor can also give you lots of free stuff initially under it's pull through strategy in other different ways for which otherwise you may end up paying heavily such as Professional Services. Also most modern & Traditional Networking Vendors offers their NOS under different subscription models and different licensing tiers. Which sets the balance here.

Now assuming you still want to continue with " Whitebox Strategy ", here is another good set of considerations:

1. RMA Strategy - Dig deeper into Whitebox vendor RMA strategy and SLAs as a relatively new player might not be able to match expectations. It's usually a larger problems for Organizations with Global footprint.

2. Quality of TAC Support - Assuming vendor is relatively new in the Industry, A good assumption would be their HW or NOS being not mature enough. Over period of time as they grow, people put their stuff into interesting environments and pushes the limits. Also any given OEM TAC would rely upon not only experienced staff but also how large your Database is. 

3. Existence - The rapid pace at which industry has evolved in last couple of years, we see some traditional players going out of business, being taken over by large players where niche players are bought by Vendors with deep pockets and M&A scenarios. So your favorite Whitebox vendor or NOS vendor may not last in Industry for different reasons. So ROI and Future protection are key considerations here.

4. Re-Skilling - Your existing Operational staff has likely no prior experience to operate this new way of thinking or working per say. But that's not where it stops, During the transition/migration you may end up maintaining this Hybrid environment (OLD + NEW) and if you haven't put enough thought process into this and got your SOWs, Run Books etc. revised it may cause more damage than good. And of course understand learning curve and it's tradeoffs. 

5. Platform Performance & Integration - Most enterprises usually at least in my experience don't have Platform testing teams in house and kind of rely on vendors which works based TRUST MODEL. From a traditional vendor perspective you at least have some level of control if at later stage the Gear doesn't meet the expectations. In a disaggregated world it kinds of gets tricky as HW and SW comes from two different vendors and Finger pointing likely doesn't go away. The moment you again apply the Eco-system logic, you run into another Anti-Pattern which was complete independence. 

6. Reach - Most people don't consider this but reach / ecosystem of System Integrators is another good consideration. Major SIs in market of course work with Major OEMs. Which means a relatively new SI may neither match the reach specially in Global context nor the quality of staff.

7. Experience - Being a new way of doing stuff, how would you compensate for experience

8. New Security Surface - Every platform and NOS has its own security surface which needs to be addressed by Organisation's (Client) IT Sec policy or Cyber Security policy whichever terminology you may prefer. How your favorite Whitebox and NOS vendors will fit into this existing ecosystem is an important consideration and most CISOs likely don't have first hand experience with such environments or not enough experience perhaps. So you as a Network Team is giving him/her some interesting work, but how many people like to work hard ?

So we can summarize that White Box is nothing new from Innovation or Engineering standpoint as such. At best it's a new fancy "Consumption Model" similar to " Cloud "

But in the end you must understand and articulate the real value in terms of Business Objectives you are going to meet with White Box and independent NOS strategy standpoint. If you don't do it correctly, this entire exercise will go for toss anyways.

Good Luck...

Further Readings:

https://packetpushers.net/research-towards-open-disaggregated-network-operating-system-att/

HTH...
Evil CCIE