Exceptional

Ullal says. “We are a high-tech company, built by
engineers for engineers, with an open culture of
communication. We really wanted to make one plus one
much greater than two.”
Bechtolsheim and Ullal have made sure that Arista
avoids the complexity trap that plagues many large
companies. “Having a flat organization that is totally
customer-focused is happiness,” Bechtolsheim says. “We
don’t even have a separate product marketing group.
Our strategy is totally built around customer priorities.”
The rise of the cloud
Because Arista’s customer base includes many
companies that are “technologically savvy” in their
own right and eager to use cloud computing for their
operations, helping customers adapt to the cloud has
become one of Arista’s priorities.
“We predicted the cloud back in 2008,” Ullal says,
but the market wasn’t quite ready at that time. In the
interim, Arista established itself as a leading provider of
networking solutions for financial traders, who relied on
robust, high-frequency trading. As that industry shifted
away from centralized data centers, Arista moved to
embrace cloud computing.
“The rapid rise of the cloud has accelerated our
growth,” Bechtolsheim says. “Five years ago, 90% of
networking gear was sold through enterprises and 10%
went through cloud data
centers. By 2016, half of all
networking will go through
the cloud.”
Moving to a cloud-based
architecture also enables
Arista to offer scalable,
open-standards-based
“We really wanted
to make one plus
one much greater
than two.”
solutions, which will help global enterprises keep pace
with the rapid growth expected in internet traffic over
the next five years.
To ensure that the company continues to develop
leading-edge networking solutions, Arista devotes 25%
of all corporate revenue to research and development
(R&D) efforts. “R&D is our single largest investment,”
Bechtolsheim says. “If you look at our total [operating
expenditures], well over half is R&D. Two-thirds of
our head count is engineering, and 90% of that is
in software engineering.”
As Arista turns to the cloud to establish itself as one
of the strongest networking companies in the world,
both Bechtolsheim and Ullal intend to ensure that it
retains its focus.
“We have to be careful to stay on our mission,” Ullal
says. “The cloud will expand to storage, virtualization
and security. Every time that expansion happens,
there’s more opportunity for us.”
Exceptional February–June 2016
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