Big Switch Networks (News - Alert) is now offering its open software defined networking (SDN) product suite – which some advocates say will lead to “transformational change” in networks.

The Big Switch Open SDN lets customers use many of those network applications not possible with older alternatives. Also, the new product suite supports open standards and APIs (application programming interfaces,) such as OpenFlow.

“SDN is the most disruptive and transformative trend to hit the networking industry in over 20 years and Big Switch Networks Open SDN product suite delivers on the promise of the full potential that we envisioned when we started this company,” Guido Appenzeller, CEO of Big Switch Networks, said in a recent statement carried by TMCnet. “Big Switch Networks ecosystem ensures customers the broadest range of choice in physical and virtual infrastructure and applications, coupled with the industry’s only open network application platform.”

In addition, the suite “unifies applications and infrastructure across vendors including support for both physical and virtual switches. It includes Big Network Controller (BNC), the Open SDN platform for network applications which scales to more than a thousand switches and 250,000 new host connections per second; Big Tap, a unified network monitoring application which provides cost-effective enterprise-wide network visibility; and Big Virtual Switch (BVS), a data center network virtualization application that makes the data center network as agile and dynamic as cloud compute resources, while also driving dramatic increases in compute utilization through automated network provisioning.”

Big Switch Networks has been able to raise some $39 million so far from venture capitalists. It also has many open SDN ecosystem partners. They include: A10 Networks (News - Alert), Arista Networks, Broadcom, Brocade, Canonical, Cariden Technologies, Citrix, Cloudscaling, Coraid, Dell, Endace, Extreme Networks, F5, Fortinet, Gigamon, Infoblox, Juniper Networks, Mellanox Technologies, Microsoft, Mirantis, Nebula, Palo Alto Networks, Piston Cloud Computing, Radware (News - Alert), StackOps, ThreatSTOP, and vArmour. 

Also, Big Virtual Switch integrates into such systems as OpenStack, CloudStack, Microsoft System Center, and VMware vCenter. 

There is another reason that Big Switch is going to be important in the SDN market. Appenzeller led the Stanford University lab that developed the OpenFlow v1.0 protocol, according to Network World.

The company already appears to be a competitor to such other firms as Cisco (News - Alert) and VMWare.  Still, Joe Skorupa, an analyst at Gartner, notes that as a startup Big Switch needs to “build a viable business model."

In the wider picture, SDN is considered to be an important trend, according to industry analysts.

“SDN is enabling a range of applications and bringing new-found agility to what historically has been a closed and inflexible enterprise network architecture,” Skorupa explained in a company statement.  “Open APIs, network application suites and support for physical and virtual infrastructure are important to realize the maximum benefits from SDN.”

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