Arista Networks is getting into campus switching. The company announced the Arista 7300X3 and 7050X3 Campus Spline, high performance Ethernet platforms up to 100G. The company aims to help enterprise customers extend their data center networking practices to their campus networks.

The X3 Series Spline platforms collapse multiple tiers of legacy hierarchical campus designs into a single tier. The company says the platforms are already proven in the data center and provide a consistent set of switching and routing features.

"Arista is unshackling the complexity of today's legacy multi-tiered box approach to an elegant Spline-based campus design,” said Jayshree Ullal, president and CEO of Arista Networks, in a statement.

Jefferies analyst George Notter said this morning in a research note that the market entrance is interesting given the fact that the company, for several years, has talked down the possibility of any entrance into campus switching.

“We understand that Arista already has a number of customers deploying their traditional data center switch products in campus applications,” writes Notter. “Moreover, they’ve been getting requests from existing data center customers for campus products. These requests really accelerated over the past three quarters. Moreover, they could enter the market without significant additional R&D commitments.”

According to Arista, today's campus networks suffer from too much complexity brought on by the myriad of platforms, operating systems, and network management tools from incumbent vendors coupled with the explosive growth of endpoints. In addition to its Spline platforms, Arista will bring a cloud networking approach that leverages its Extensible Operating System (EOS) and its CloudVision technology, which brings visibility for network operations in the area of telemetry.

The Arista 7300X3 and 7050X3 Spline platforms and the associated cognitive EOS and CloudVision capabilities are in trials now with general availability in the third quarter.

Notter said it’s too early for Cisco to be worried about Arista’s foray into campus switching. “Incumbency is a powerful advantage of course,” he writes. “Cisco’s competitive advantage lies in the ability to bundle and integrate a plethora of network solutions into a single solution for customers. Security is a big new focus in this regard. Also, Cisco is currently in the midst of refreshing its own campus product line.”

Arista also said it was working in partnerships with Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, and VMware.

"We welcome Arista's expansion to the campus Spline and look forward to offering joint best-of-breed solutions for our customers,” said Keerti Melkote, president of Aruba, in a statement.

And Greg Bollella, CTO for Internet of Things (IoT) at VMware stated, “VMware and Arista share a common vision for creating a digital business fabric for connecting, visualizing, and securely managing IoT endpoints, IoT edge systems, and campus and cloud networks. The combination of Arista's CloudVision and VMware Pulse IoT Center will go a long way toward realizing this vision."