Network spending overwhelmingly favors incumbent network vendors, as any enterprise will tell you. Network modernization spending, which currently accounts for about 90% of what enterprises spend on network gear, doesn't come about as a big fork-lift of an entire network, but rather a gradual replacement of boxes that have been fully written off and are getting old, limited in capacity, and expensive to repair and operate. The easiest replacement to make is to just switch to the newer product of the same vendor, and hey, who doesn't want easy? This sort of purchase is also less risky; there are no new relationships to learn and to manage, and a no-risk decision is good, too, right?

How does a network startup fit in, then? Consider what offsets ease and lack of risk: Money. If new network equipment can save a lot of money, or if it's needed to support a new application or service that improves productivity or lowers overall costs a lot, then it's worth looking into. Of 321 enterprise IT professionals who have offered me comments on network startup vendors, 303 said that money is the only reason to run to a startup, and the rest said it is the most compelling reason.

Startups, and the venture capitalists that back them, aren't stupid either, so we can already see examples of how network startups address this money focus. There are two primary paths: lower costs radically with a revolutionary design and focus on network impacts of new computing strategies. A great example of both can be seen in the software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN).