Big Switch Networks Rolls Out Entry Point Products

Big Switch Networks, the cloud-first networking vendor, on Thursday announced a lighter version of its Big Monitoring Fabric (Big Mon) Analytics Node and Recorder Node, targeting edge locations and midmarket organizations. 

Big Monitoring Fabric enables end-to-end visibility and security for applications based on their networking behavior for on-premises and public cloud deployments. Big Mon Analytics Node uses analytics for troubleshooting application performance, connectivity and oversubscriptions issues within the data center. The Big Monitoring Recorder Node, built on an industry standard x86 server appliance, is a next generation packet recording solution that organizations use for compliance security and troubleshooting. 

“This is an expansion of our go-to-market into the edge and midmarket, or smaller environments, with analytics and recording capabilities that have been shipping to the data center only, up until today,” Prashant Gandhi, chief product officer at Big Switch Networks, told Channel Futures.

The new smaller form factors for the Analytics Node and Recorder Node require one-third the storage and the price has been reduced by 40%, Ghandi said. This allows companies to expand their monitoring, analytics and monitoring to their edge locations and midmarket businesses also can get access to the Big Mon capabilities. 

“The challenge for many of these companies is that these tools are very expensive and [they] often have limited staff. They need operational simplicity in order to have their existing staff do more,” said Gandhi. 

With Big Mon Analytics and Recorder Nodes, customers benefit from deep network telemetry for cloud-based and traditional data-center environments. These products provide the ability to play past conversations across users and applications with a single click. The entry-level nodes are attractive and cost-effective for enterprise and midmarket customers looking for advanced packet intelligence and packet recording for quick detection and resolution of network connectivity, performance and security-related use cases. 

Big Switch Networks’ partners need to understand the value proposition of the entry-point products, particularly among midmarket customers, in industry-specific markets such as health care, legal and financial, who often can’t afford analytics tools.

“Partners now have an opportunity to increase their deal size because the pricing threshold is lower and there’s no management overhead,” said Gandhi. 

In Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking (July 2018) Big Switch fell into the visionary category, along Cumulus Networks, VMware, Dell EMC, Arista Networks, Juniper Networks, and Cisco.