Arista acquires Big Switch Networks for network visibility
Arista Networks on Thursday announced that it has acquired Big Switch Networks, a network monitoring and software-defined networking (SDN) pioneer, to give customers better visibility into their cloud area networks. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Arista also reported solid fourth quarter financial results in spite of losing some major business from a key hyperscale cloud customer.
Big Switch's capabilities are expected to strengthen Arista's DANZ (Data ANalyZer) capabilities, as well as its CloudVision software platform. "Their engineering prowess in multi-cloud monitoring and control as an SDN pioneer for a decade has resulted in approximately 300 happy customers," Arista CEO Jayshree Ullal wrote in a blog post.
Additionally, the partnership that Big Switch established with Dell Networking, to deliver cloud fabric and observability capabilities, will extend to Arista.
For the fourth quarter, Arista reported non-GAAP net income of $183.4 million, or $2.29 per diluted share. Revenue was $552.5 million, a decrease of 7.2 percent from the fourth quarter of 2018.
Analysts were expecting earnings of $2.10 on revenue of $550.98 million.
For the full fiscal year 2019, non-GAAP net income came to $786.8 million or $9.73 per diluted share. Revenue was $2.41 billion, an increase of 12.1 percent compared to fiscal year 2018.
"Despite the volatility of cloud spend, 2019 marked the entry of Arista in the campus and mainstream enterprise," Ullal said in a statement. "Our cloud networking technology is being accepted in thousands of diverse enterprise customers. We are excited by our prospects in 2020 and committed to a multi-year foundation of growth, innovation and profitability."
For the first quarter of 2020, Arista expects revenue between $522 million to $532 million.