Microsoft contributes to Facebook's Open Compute Project; Cisco, are you watching?

Microsoft announced a new innovation for the Facebook-founded Open Compute Project. Called Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC), it's a collection of software networking components required to build network devices like switches. Together with Microsoft's previously announced SAI (Switch Abstraction Interface), SONiC will enable cloud operators to take advantage of hardware innovation while giving them a framework to build upon an open source code for apps on the network switch, and gain the ability to integrate with multiple platforms.Microsoft believes it’s the final piece of the puzzle in delivering a fully open sourced switch platform that can share the same software stack across hardware from multiple switch vendors. SONiC is being joined by contributions from Arista, Broadcom, Dell and Mellanox. SONiC is about cloud, speed and scale, says Microsoft — and because it can be easily extended with other open source, third party or proprietary software components, it can ultimately speed time-to-market and greatly improve data-center efficiency.Now, Software-Defined Networking is another giant's favourite game — Cisco's. The company must be following these developments very closely. Facebook itself took a personal shot at Cisco last year when it announced the network switch called the Wedge.  As this report indicates, several companies are building Facebook's switches and selling them.About SONiC, Microsoft developed it for use in its own cloud computing data centers. It's using it now to support its Azure and Office 365 services, Azure CTO Mark Russinovich shared with Business Insider.