Data centers, the last bastions of proprietary Internet infrastructure solutions, are facing a new challenger, one that promises to break down walls by providing standardization, flexibility, and increased control over data center operations — Open Data Center Networking.

For decades, networking giants like Cisco, Juniper, and Brocade dominated the industry. Later, Google, Facebook, and Amazon built extensive data centers using proprietary hardware and software, emerging as leading hyper-scale operators. Today, the Open Compute Project is disaggregating hardware and software in the data center to provide greater flexibility, scalability, and efficiency with software doing more heavy lifting.

This next generation of networking is driving disruption in the IT infrastructure market, which IDC predicts will maintain a 24% CAGR to reach over $140B by 2019.

• With the adoption of open data center networking, who will come out ahead?
• Will IT infrastructure startups be able to challenge the infrastructure giants that currently dominate the market?
• Which companies are the venture capitalists watching?

Moderator

Roy Chua, Co-Founder and Partner, SDxCentral

Panelists

Mansour Karam, Co-Founder and CEO, Apstra

JR Rivers, Co-Founder and CTO, Cumulus Networks

Amit Sanyal, VP of Product Management, Innovium

Sudip Chakrabarti, Partner, LightSpeed Venture Partners