How Arista Networks' Latest Acquisition Propels Its Cloud Computing Strategy

Though not historically very active in terms of acquisitions, cloud computing hardware and service provider Arista Networks  recently went shopping. According to reports, Arista is paying an undisclosed amount (which usually means small, at least compared to the size of the acquiring business) for software-defined network provider Big Switch Networks, beating out other potential networking hardware suitors like Cisco , Dell Technologies,and VMware. Though this purchase will barely show up on the radar as far as dollars and cents go (Big Switch has raised $120 million in investment funding since its founding in 2010, according to Crunchbase, and Arista has done $2.5 billion in revenue over the last 12 months), it's nevertheless an important one. Arista is trying to move into new territory in the cloud industry, specifically going after organizations that want to build their own private data center and cloud service for personal use. As public cloud data center buildout from the likes of Amazon's  AWS and Microsoft's Azure matures over time, this new discipline could help Arista maintain its fast pace of expansion.