Gigamon is expanding its GigaVUE-OS software to be supported on select third-party white box hardware. Announced today, the new advance will enable web-scale data center operators to optimize their procurement processes and broaden monitoring's scope and scale. It's what we already expect from Gigamon, but now offered on a generic server.

The "visibility your way" path Gigamon is taking helps to address the emerging industry needs, says Anada Rajagopal, VP of product line management. Increasing security threats, east-west traffic created by distributed applications, and blind spots caused by new encapsulations and encryptions are all reasons why better visibility is needed as network architectures evolve. The transition to software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) are also prodding demand for pervasive visibility.

Customers of Gigamon's Visibility Fabric will now have the option of using Gigamon's turnkey offering for the data center edge or white box edge hardware driven by Gigamon software. Either way, they get a consistent operational model that looks at their entire visibility infrastructure from the network edge to Gigamon's fabric, Rajagopal says.

The visibility market is changing as new competitors come to the surface, says Christian Renaud, senior analyst at 451 Research.

"Large cloud service providers and enterprises are embracing white box switches, so having an offering consistent with white box on the visibility side gives Gigamon (who has deep expertise and feature/functionality in the space) a big step up," he writes in an email to SDxCentral. "VSS [Monitoring] and Ixia have not made overtures in that direction, and there are no signs they intend to do so anytime soon. It's a bold move by a market leader and should open quite a few enterprise and CSP doors in the near term."

To start, GigaVUE-OS will be certified to work with select hardware from QCT and Agema Systems, two of industry's large white box suppliers. Beta testing with QCT is set to begin in February, with general availability slated for April 2015. Agema Systems will follow shortly after.