Last week we heard rumblings that there was significant changes happening with Cisco's onePK personnel and later confirmed that Tom Black the VP at Cisco responsible for building Cisco's SDN Initiatives has left the company and joined Arista Networks.

We've been told that he will lead Arista's SDN efforts (and Arista's website says as much) and is actively recruiting a team of engineers to build SDN functionality within Arista. We're guessing he'll build a 10 to 20 engineer-sized team in the near future, and whether and how he builds a traditional SDN controller remains to be seen. 

What does this mean to:

• Cisco onePK: A significant blow to Cisco's effort to "SDN-ize" their product lines and provide developers an API into Cisco solutions.  My experience suggests that an executive move like this will delay onePK for 6 - 12 months.
• Arista: Hiring Tom Black is a significant win, not only did they hire a talented individual, but a key person leading their No. 1 competitor's SDN execution plans.
• SDN Start-ups: Assuming the expected scope and size of his team – Arista just created another well-financed SDN start-up within the walls of a successful, privately funded networking company – that is attached to some of the most innovative networking hardware. Your competition is taken to a new level.
  • Hardware vendors (like Plexxi and Pluribus): for the near term, Arista will likely be your main competition for early customers.
  • Controller vendors (Big Switch, Plumgrid, Midokura, etc): Arista may be your short-term partner, but expect them to eventually be your competitor.  Between an internal investment in their own SDN team; Arista's co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim is also an investor in Nebula, which smells an awful like an SDN controller to customers we speak with.  Check this post out to learn more about other Arista investments.
• Customers: SDN is shaping up to more than just another networking battle resigned to be won by Cisco – between VMware and now Arista – we can see that names other Cisco are focused to carve our their name in the space. It also means the market will take longer to evolve as prospective customers wait for solutions to arrive from trusted vendors and not start ups. Our experience is it takes 9 to 12 months to deliver an initial product from start to finish.  Assuming Arista is starting with the new hire of Black, we expect Arista will deliver their own SDN solution about this time next year.

We expect to hear more interesting SDN executive moves in the coming days and weeks, which is a sign of a vibrant and dynamic market.