Arista Networks added a pair of unified wired and wireless campus edge products to its Cognitive Campus line that targets what it sees as “transitional changes” at enterprises as they move to incorporate more edge devices in their campus deployments. That expansion is on the backs of a new power over Ethernet (PoE) switch and a new WiFi access point.

Jeff Raymond, vice president for Arista’s EOS Software and Services, said the new products complete the company’s cognitive enterprise networking portfolio. That reach includes data centers, the cloud, and campus environments.

“We needed to add these PoE switches and we also needed to have a strong WiFi and other solutions to strengthen our position,” Raymond said. He explained that this was becoming increasingly important as its customers are looking to add new device types, like IoT, to their campus deployments.

The new switch is the 720XP Series that is Arista’s first purpose-built campus leaf product. It includes four fixed configuration models and can provide multi-gigabit access port speeds to support up to 60 watts of PoE for powering IP phones, access points, and IoT devices. It also has 25G, 40G, and 100G uplink ports for connectivity to Arista’s Campus Spline platforms.

It also uses Arista’s EOS and CloudVision software. Raymond said this supports Arista’s focus on being a software-led equipment provider as opposed to more “traditional networks that are box-led.”

“We can lead with the software and more easily normalize the network,” Raymond said. “This makes achieving uniformity across the network achievable.”

The leaf switches also integrate with Arista’s Cognitive WiFi platform, which includes the newly-launched C-250 access point. That access point is Arista’s first WiFi 6-compliant device and includes all of the latest WiFi AP features like multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) antenna technology and a dual-band radio that can continuously stream telemetry data into the Cognitive WiFi architecture. That data can then be analyzed using machine learning and cognitive intelligence.

Both new products are in trials with general availability set for the third quarter of this year.

Raymond explained that the latest expansion builds on Arista’s push last year into the campus switching space. That announcement included a pair of data center spline products targeted at enterprise customers extending their data center networking practices to their campus networks.

It also takes advantage of the CloudVision WiFi service Arista unveiled last fall. That service integrated components of Arista’s acquisition of Mojo Networks and was launched as part of the broader CloudVision platform.

“We’ve increased our readiness for taking on the enterprise with these new products,” Raymond said of how Arista has bolstered its presence in the market. “Those previous moves were incremental. We had the core before, but now we have filled that out.”

A recent report from IDC showed Arista in a tight battle for the No. 2 position with Chinese vendor Huawei for Ethernet switch revenues during the first quarter of this year. The report noted that Arista grew revenues 24% year over year and increased its market share from 6.5% to 7.5% over that time frame. Huawei’s Ethernet revenues increased at a slightly lower pace, but it managed to grow its market share from 8.1% in 2018 to 8.9% this year.

Both vendors were significantly below market heavyweight Cisco, which controlled more than half of the Ethernet switch revenues generated during the first quarter.