Aviz Networks details why Gartner replaced Open Networking with SONiC

Gartner’s 2023 Enterprise Networking Hype Cycle replaces “Open Networking” with SONiC and cites client interest as the rationale, while shortening the timeline to 2–5 years. The update matters to enterprise security and operations teams planning for network lifecycle, vendor dependencies, and support models.

Research Overview

The vendor brief centers on Gartner’s 2023 Enterprise Networking Hype Cycle and a reported change from the 2022 chart. It focuses on how “Open Networking” was substituted with SONiC and how the hype cycle timeline moved from 5–10 years to 2–5 years.

The brief also frames the vendor’s commentary as a five-point analysis of why the shift occurred and what it considers a “path forward” for enterprise networking. It ties the discussion to customer questions about deploying SONiC in environments that already use incumbent vendors.

Key Findings

In the brief’s account, Gartner stated that “Open networking has been replaced on the Hype Cycle with SONiC, which garners the most client interest of any open networking technology.” It adds that the timeline was moved to a shorter 2–5 year range in the 2023 presentation.

The brief uses this change to argue that SONiC reached a practical footing that prior “open networking” approaches did not achieve. It connects that framing to enterprise goals that include avoiding single-vendor dependency and reducing both capital and operational spend across refresh cycles.

Technical Breakdown

The brief describes earlier approaches as disaggregated Network Operating System (NOS) models that it characterizes as partial implementations of open networking. It says these models separated hardware and software while keeping portions of the NOS proprietary, which the brief argues limited the openness needed to prevent lock-in.

SONiC is presented as an open-source, community-governed NOS with what the brief describes as vendor-neutral support across hardware and switches. The brief states that SONiC enables choice of switches and white-box or incumbent hardware, while also supporting standardized operations via a common NOS layer.

Operational Impact

The vendor brief ties the operational consequences to total cost of ownership dynamics, describing earlier “open networking” as delivering mainly CapEx savings through cheaper hardware while leaving OpEx spend largely unchanged. It says customers used quotes from “open networking” vendors to lower incumbent hardware pricing, but that OpEx pressure remained.

It also frames customer evaluation criteria for SONiC as including multi-vendor consistency, standardized behavior across NOS and hardware, and integration with public and private cloud environments. The brief lists enterprise support and deployment questions, including how to maintain enterprise-grade support regardless of switch or ASIC vendor and how to normalize SONiC behavior across platforms.

Leadership Perspective

The brief attributes the shift to client interest in SONiC and argues that previous open networking labeling did not match the broader ecosystem openness that enterprises expect. It states that the vendor sees SONiC as aligning with customer requirements for faster access to next-generation speeds and ASIC features.

The brief also describes the vendor’s role in adoption as focused on processes, a commercial ecosystem, and an end-to-end stack that it says is open for any ASIC, any switch, any NOS, and any cloud. It presents listed activities such as developing support services, providing normalization tools, and offering orchestration and integration support.

The overall takeaway is that Gartner’s 2023 hype cycle update, as described in the vendor brief, centers “Open Networking” on SONiC with a shorter timeline and stated client interest. The brief ties this shift to enterprise planning around CapEx and OpEx, vendor dependency, and multi-vendor operations; this “Blog Signals brief” is a fact-based summary of the vendor blog.