AI networks drive SONiC boom
Network World ·
Multiple factors are coming together to propel enterprise deployments of SONiC, the open-source network operating system (NOS) created 10 years ago by Microsoft to run on white box switches in hyperscale data centers. Alan Weckel, founder and analyst at 650 Group , is forecasting that data center switching revenue based on SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud) will exceed $5 billion in 2026 and that enterprise SONiC adoption will grow more than 25% year-over-year through 2027. Dell’Oro Group predicts that SONiC-based switch sales in AI scale-out networks will grow at more than 50 % a year through 2030, when revenues will exceed $10 billion. And Gartner estimates that 2,500 organizations are running SONiC in production, and roughly one-third of those are enterprises. “SONiC is slowly and incrementally evolving from a niche white-box solution to a viable option on high-performance switches,” Gartner stated earlier this year in its data center switching guide. “The disaggregation of hardware and software is no longer limited to cloud deployments; It is becoming a viable option for enterprises seeking flexibility, cost control, and reduced vendor lock-in, particularly within modern leaf-spine architectures and scale-out AI networks.” There are four key factors driving the growth of SONiC, which Microsoft officially transferred to the Linux Foundation in 2022. 1. Major switch vendors are on board Traditional enterprise switch vendors, including Arista, Cisco, Dell, and Nvidia, are offering support for SONiC on their hardware. For example, Cisco announced in May that it is extending SONiC support to its N9000 Series data center switches. (Read more: SONiC momentum continues at OCP Global Summit ) Supporting an open-source NOS may sound like a counterintuitive strategy for switch vendors that sell their own proprietary software. But the opportunity to sell high-performance switches into the booming AI data center market is too lucrative to pass up. And giving enterprises the option to deploy SONiC for specific use cases within the larger vendor ecosystem is a smart customer retention strategy. The calculation is that customers who want the flexibility and cost savings of an open-source NOS might not have the in-house expertise to deploy white box switches—a do-it-yourself approach that lacks customer service and support, as well as other features such as enterprise-grade telemetry, monitoring and orchestration. Dell’Oro group analyst Sian Morgan says SONiC has historically been deployed primarily by the hyperscalers, with Microsoft and Alibaba as the two most prominent examples. “It requires a specialized skill set to operate and maintain, which makes it less suitable for enterprise deployments. This is especially true for an enterprise that wishes to focus its lean workforce on strategic and revenue generating tasks as opposed to keeping its IT running,” Morgan explains. But, as Gartner analyst Andrew Lerner points out, “networking vendors are increasingly offering enterprise-ready SONiC distributions, including their own hardened versions complete with commercial support, validated hardware compatibility, and integration into their fabric management software.” For example, Dell has its own SONiC distribution that includes enterprise-grade features and global support. The new Cisco Nexus One architecture supports SONiC. And contract manufacturers such as Wistron, Accton, and Celestica offer hardened versions of SONiC integrated with the switching hardware of the customer’s choosing. 2. AI creates demand for SONiC Arpit Joshipura , general manager of networking, edge and IoT at the Linux Foundation , says disaggregated networking with SONiC at the operating system layer eliminates vendor lock-in, lowers TCO, and enables networking teams to standardize operations across multi-vendor data centers. But the biggest driver these days is AI. Enterprises are discovering that the network can pose a major bottleneck in AI data centers, particularly when it comes to bursty traffic generated by AI inferencing . Joshipura explains that around 18 months ago, the Linux Foundation aligned its SONiC development roadmap to focus on AI data center workloads. Multiple working groups tackled AI-specific challenges and addressed several key issues, including traffic load balancing with SRv6 segment routing; traffic burstiness with a packet trimming feature that enables fast recovery in congestion scenarios; and high-frequency telemetry that captures fine-grained metrics at higher sampling rates, which is necessary for monitoring time sensitive AI workloads. Today, SONiC is “the only open-source NOS that is customized for AI workloads and the AI era,” Joshipura says. And enterprises have taken note. “We’re seeing a lot more AI getting pushed into enterprise data centers, which don’t have a choice but to go with SONiC because it is AI optimized.” He adds that SONiC is ideal for specific use cases such as lossless Ethernet fabrics, spine and leaf topologies, and AI training/inference networks. Adopters include telcos, financial services companies, and large enterprises looking for scale, automation, and multi-vendor flexibility. 3. Startups have jumped on the SONiC bandwagon A new generation of startups has sprung up to offer packages that encompass SONiC-based networking along with enterprise-grade service and support, similar to what Red Hat and SUSE did with early open-source Linux in the server market. Here are some examples: Aviz Networks: Aviz , which received early funding help from Cisco, offers a pre-tested, multi-ASIC, hardware agnostic, enterprise-ready SONiC distro with added features such as bug fixes, telemetry and support. Hedgehog Networks: Founded by former Cisco exec Marc Austin in 2022 to bring SONiC-based disaggregated networking to the enterprise, Hedgehog’s mission is to simplify the deployment of private cloud AI networks with automation and orchestration based on Kubernetes. Upscale AI: This startup has raised $500 million with the goal of building a new networking platform from ground up, starting with its own silicon. The company is targeting AI data centers as its sole market and is using SONiC as the NOS. Most recently, Upscale introduced Token Fabric architecture , which combines the company’s own SkyFabriX scale-up silicon, scale-out systems built on Nvidia Spectrum-X Ethernet, and a common software layer for operations. General availability is planned for early 2027. The announcement builds on two earlier milestones. Upscale, based in Santa Clara, Calif., emerged from stealth in September 2025 with a $100 million seed round . In June, it raised an additional $190 million 4. SONiC expands beyond the data center Community support is the lifeblood of any open-source project. Under the Linux Foundation, the SONiC community has grown to more than 4,300 contributors. Heavyweight members include Alibaba, Arista, Broadcom, Cisco, Dell, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, and Nvidia. The SONiC community is currently working to extend the technology from the data center to the network edge. The PoE Edge Networks with SONiC (PENS) workgroup, led by Aviz, Wistron, Cisco and Celestica, is working to adapt SONiC for edge LANs. Specifically, the group is integrating protocols consistent with Wi-Fi networks and IoT devices, such as Power Over Ethernet (PoE) and 802.1x. “At the enterprise edge, SONiC is extending its reach beyond core data centers, enabling disaggregated networking in campus, branch, and retail environments where flexibility and cost efficiency are paramount,” says Weckel. “As edge inference workloads proliferate, it is likely these SONiC deployments will expand there,” Weckel adds. “Looking ahead, SONiC’s edge evolution will bridge the gap between hyperscale efficiency and enterprise reliability.” In addition, there’s an Open LAN Switching (OLS) group under the umbrella of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) that is developing standards for the deployment of SONiC-powered switching infrastructure in enterprise campus environments. “OLS provides an open platform that includes onboarding, configuration and monitoring and can run SONiC as the network operating system,” Dell’Oro’s Morgan says. “OLS is interesting to enterprises because it allows them to source the hardware directly from one of several manufacturers. Enterprises can then source the software and support from an OLS software vendor at lower cost than if they had purchased the entire stack from one source.” Representative vendors include Edgecore , Asterfusion , and Larch Networks .