The Open Compute Platform launched its networking effort in 2013 in a bid to disrupt the business model of big networking vendors. One of those big vendors is Juniper Networks. Today, in a surprising move, Juniper announced that it is embracing the Open Compute Platform with its own open hardware switch, the OCX 1100.
The promise of the Open Compute Project’s networking effort is a “white box” for networking gear: networking equipment built on open hardware specifications that are not tied to specific operating systems. Juniper historically has built its own hardware, with its own silicon, and then used its own Junos operating system on top. Though Open Compute might on the surface appear to be directly competitive with the Juniper business model, Jonathan Davidson, SVP and GM, Security, Switching and Solutions Business Unit at Juniper, disagrees.
