HPE, Juniper and the Enterprise Arista Is Only Now EnteringThin moat

Arista's answer to customer concentration is enterprise and campus networking, and the competitive situation there is the reverse of the one it is used to. In the data centre Arista sells to a handful of technically sophisticated buyers who evaluate products on merit. In the enterprise it sells to thousands of IT departments with existing vendors, existing certifications, existing support contracts and very little appetite for change.

The incumbents are formidable in a way that has nothing to do with technology. Cisco's enterprise position rests on three decades of relationships and a certification ecosystem that has trained a generation of network engineers. HPE, having absorbed Juniper, is a consolidated competitor with a broad portfolio and its own installed base. Selling against them requires a channel, a services organisation and patience — none of which are what made Arista successful.

Arista's advantages travel imperfectly. One operating system across the whole line is genuinely valuable to an enterprise, and its VeloCloud acquisition brought branch and edge capability it did not have. But enterprise buyers pay for support and continuity more than for architecture.

Watch enterprise revenue growth against total revenue growth. Enterprise growing faster is the diversification working; growing slower means Arista is becoming more concentrated in the titans, not less — which is the outcome the root threat describes, and which the company's own diversification language is aimed at¹.