Arista Networks Inc. today announced a disaggregated offering that aligns to new cloud business models. The Arista EOS (Extensible Operating System) platform will now be available as a subscription. With this offering Arista is addressing the business challenges cloud providers face in building out capacity in advance of customer demand.

“The traditional up-front CapEx model is not cost efficient for us as a business as we continue to scale our hybrid cloud infrastructure. Arista's EOS as a subscription offering, for consuming network infrastructure, allows us more flexibility in managing our Capex and Opex spend, allowing Ormuco to continue to provide a competitive and progressive platform for our customers," said Orlando Bayter, CEO of Ormuco Communications, a leading global enterprise cloud, managed services and telecommunications provider.

Arista EOS as a Subscription (EaaS) service is an alternative for procuring today’s integrated offerings. With the current offerings, Arista hardware and EOS software are integrated into a single bundle, mapping to CapEx budget allocations for a perpetual licensing period. The new software subscription-based licensing model offers customers a way to better balance their CapEx and Opex budgets.

“The cloud industry is experiencing such rapid growth and demand that it only makes sense for their business models to evolve as well,” said Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research. “Vendors like Arista that not only recognize the change but adapt and expand their offerings to better suit the cloud market are in the best position to lead the market in building large, scalable modern networks.”

EOS Programmability at Granular Levels for Unified DevOps and NetOps

The Arista EOS platform was designed to meet the demands of cloud networks from its inception. Arista EOS is uniquely programmable at all system levels and at multiple points within a plane. The multiple levels include the Application Plane, Management Plane, Virtualization Plane, Control Plane, Data Plane and Open Linux Tools. This level of granularity and automation give customers the ability to systematically program the network infrastructure and automate IT workflows.

Arista continues to evolve the EOS platform to the needs of the software-driven cloud networking community. EOS now includes a simplified programming model for Python and Ruby scripting languages through tighter integration with Arista’s eAPI. As a proof point, Puppet Labs recently introduced the availability of a native Arista EOS Puppet agent and an Arista EOS module on the Puppet Forge user community. Arista is the first and only networking vendor supported as part of the Puppet Enterprise Supported Modules program. Puppet Enterprise can now seamlessly work with data centers powered by Arista EOS and changes to the network can happen as part of the application workflow, keeping with Arista’s tradition of openness without proprietary vendor tools. Along with Puppet integration, Arista has extensive integration with both Ansible and Chef DevOps platforms, demonstrating its continued leadership in this space.

Availability

General availability for Arista EOS as a Subscription (EaaS) is Q2 CY2015.
Arista EOS (EaaS) pricing starts at $495/month for select fixed configuration products and includes all EOS advanced feature licenses along with 24x7 A-Care support.