Just a day after Juniper announced the opening up of its JUNOS operating system, Cisco announced similar plans to open up is venerable IOS routing software to third-party developers. The 
move will be the foundation for its metamorphosis into a software company. Backed by a dedicated software group that was formed last week, Cisco officials are now tinkering with making IOS more than just a platform for Cisco-developed services in the network, reports Network World's Jim Duffy, who is at Cisco's C-Scape conference this week. Cisco plans to "componentize" IOS – developing only one implementation of a specific function instead of several, depending on the image – dynamically link IOS services and move the software onto a Unix-based kernel.
Cisco then plans to open up interfaces on IOS to allow third-party applications to access IOS services.
It appears that Cisco has flip-flopped on whether to open up its crown jewels for a while. Last year at Networkers, Cisco CEO John Chambers said the company needs to evolve its software strategy in order to alleviate customer confusion, foster choice, and not have software sales tightly coupled with hardware. This was interpreted as a plan to decouple IOS from hardware and sell it as separate packages. At Networkers 2007, Chambers said that was a misunderstanding. Its announcement at C-Scape is the boldest yet to secure Cisco a place in the software industry.
Earlier this week, Juniper announced a Partner Solution Development Platform (PSDP) allowing customers and partners to develop specialized applications on its JUNOS operating system.
How does Cisco opening up IOS affect your future Cisco buying decisions?
See also: Cisco's metamorphosis into a software company is not without challenges
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Cisco Competitors
This is a very interesting development.
Cisco competitors have been copying the Cisco command line interface:
Appealing to CCIEs, hardware vendors copy Cisco's CLI and NetFlow to get into Cisco accounts
Perhaps this a way for Cisco to address anticipated future margin erosion.
Sincerely,
Brad Reese
http://www.BradReese.Com
Cisco Opens Up?
While I don't see Cisco 'open'ing up the way some of the Open Source people would like to see them do, Cisco is feeling pressure from a variety of sources, though I woulnd't say Vyatta or XORP present an immediate threat (though who can say about the future).
I think that if you look at the number of different ways that Cisco has diversified does give come indication of the areas that Cisco thinks it needs to compete in. While their strength has always been routing -- and these are still the core products -- the definition of 'network infrastructure' has spawned tendrils which reach down (or 'up' if you prefer) into the application layer.
Cisco currently is pitching the concept of the 'Intelligent Information Network' in their training materials. The network, says Cisco, will need to be more aware of the applications and the nature of the application traffic which traverses the network in order to get to the next generation of networking. I see only two ways for this to happen; build components in your products that understand the application traffic, or let others do it for you.
The only reasonable way to accomplish this is to provide hooks into the products that other vendors and application designers can take advantage to identify the applications, what they need and how they need it.
And this brings us to the current state where Cisco is announcing some program to provide some sort of APIs for applications and appliances to provide a better level of communication between the 'highway' and the 'riders' that use it. Simple examples of this type of connectivity already exist in other products (witness UPnP support in home routers.)
The componentizing of Cisco IOS is a natural extension and evolution of the product: continuing to exist as a monolithic, integrated operating system is not scalable and it's feeling the pains. An easy example of this is IOS XR which is used on the CRS-1 and 12000 series routers.
I believe that moves in this direction happened years ago when Cisco licensed technology from QNX. This quiet start has now provided the fruit which I believe to be IOS XR.
So, we now have a more robust foundation for future versions of IOS which is modular and easily extendable and Cisco looking to provide access to this operating system through published APIs.
I'm just hoping that Cisco is more successful at providing access in a controlled manner to this environment than some other, large, software corporations.
Router market is becoming commodity
today's Middle and low end market is really becoming commodity, High end router is pure bits pipe;
unified infrastructure was leading by the Ethernet connectivity, why need a router? Forrest sullivan forecasted that still 48% enterprise using legacy circuit, and the rest of market already moved to IP/DSL. Open source router is a good fit for most of enterprise. and it's more scalable in supporting new service.
Enterprise do not really want to develop too much feature on IOS or JUNOS, reliability is a big concern.
Enterprise router market is moving ether low end connectivity or high end powerful router architecture.
managed service may be a potential reason why IOS/JUNOS want to open the system. Telco carrier want something value added service to be developped, and that's the way to differentiate with they competitor with some proprietory feature that is not available on standard IOS/JUNOS .
Disagree!!! In my field (HD
Disagree!!! In my field (HD Video/VOIP), the router cannot be thought of as a commodity. There are simply too many subtle differences in how each vendor architects their product. Knowing this there are routers that are packet movers and then there are routers that can intelligently and reliabily handle RTP MUCH better than others.
How much of IOS is Cisco going to open up via APIs?
Cisco Subnet blogger Michael Morris has also posted his take on this story. To read his comments, go here:
Morris: How much of IOS is Cisco going to open up via APIs? http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/22991
Sceptic
I find it more than reasonable to be sceptical to such suggestions from Cisco. Ex: It was once promised that IOS version 10.0 would be modular so that customers freely could choose the bits they need. More than a decade later it is still the same (or worse) monolith monster.
"a Unix-based kernel"?
Why can't they just give FreeBSD a few seconds in the sun? Obscuring it like this is at the very least sloppy if not a bit absurd.
Not about Cisco vs. Juniper, but Cisco vs. Microsoft
Cisco Subnet blogger Joe Panettieri says the move isn't about countering Juniper's move, but is all about beating Microsoft to the unified communications punch. Read here http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/23158 to find out why.