Creating a Whole New Industry???

Cisco announced today it is opening up IOS to third-party developers. I think this could create a whole new industry of small software companies extending IOS. With APIs into IOS, other software companies could develop code that runs directly on the router. So, you need something in the network that Cisco IOS doesn’t have? Hire a company to develop your software that hooks into IOS. All running right on the routers themselves; just as thousands of companies write software to run on Windows. Plus, general software will be developed for the OTS market. This would create a whole new industry. I bet the network management vendors are going to be the first to love it. There are a few questions I have though: – How much of IOS is Cisco going to open up via APIs? For example, if your version of BGP is just better, can that be API’d into IOS? Or will this just be enough for some nice ping software? – What are the licensing requirements and how is Cisco going to charge companies? (or is it free?) – Does this mean IOS could run on non-Cisco HW some day soon? Let’s be honest…a nice 1RU server with a couple Ethernet interfaces could replace 90% of the functions an ISR provides? – Is this just IOS? What about SAN-OS? What about IOS XR? What about UC? Now, while Cisco’s getting to those questions, where’s my contact list of software engineer friends and venture capitalists?????