Big Switch Networks and A10 Networks are announcing today a collaboration for the sake of cyberthreat protection and more agile data centers.

A10’s Thunder Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) will be deployable with Big Switch’s Big Cloud Fabric, offering a data center fabric that lets users deploy apps more easily on pods that are inserted directly into existing data centers. A10’s Thunder Threat Protection System (TPS) will also be able to use Big Tap Monitoring Fabric for DDoS attack detection across the entire data center.

Prashant Gandhi, VP of product management and strategy at Big Switch, says the partnership will address some of the most pressing enterprise needs — cyberthreats and agile app delivery in private clouds.

“The seamless ability for A10 products to integrate with our SDN fabric helps us deliver enterprise-class, scale-out security and application delivery,” writes Gandhi in an email to SDxCentral. “Products from both of our companies are designed for programmability and leverage orchestration mechanisms such as OpenStack for automation.”

Big Switch and A10 also say this collaboration will lower capex by using bare-metal switches and by honing operational benefits through automated configuration.

Big Switch's proposition, in general, is that its products can bring the benefits of hyperscale software-defined networking (SDN) to the not-so-hyperscale enterprise.