Pica8 Guns for Cisco With PicaPilot White Box Software Platform
Summary
The PicaPilot platform compresses the software footprint of white box switches so that they appear as a single device for configuration and management. Paine noted that the openness, scalability, and ease of deployment were advantages of the Pica8 platform compared to rival offerings. “PicaPilot is looking to provide a solution that presents a Leaf and Spine network architecture as a single IP management and they claim to be able to reduce the number of managed elements by 10 to 50 times per site,” explained Bob Laliberte, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Arista is sort of open in terms of some of their switches, but I don’t know how that works in the long term.” Some large telecom operators have also begun to more aggressively pursue the white box space. “This will give us the flexibility to scale out service much quicker and with greater control.” Pica8’s Paine noted that those efforts show the growing push behind the white box market.
