Corporate Paranoia in the Snowden Era Leads to a Startup Boom - Bloomberg

A changing competitive landscape for Cisco

"One company that’s benefiting is SnapRoute Inc., which was founded by a former manager of Apple’s global data center network. The startup makes a cheaper, simpler network switch than the ones Cisco sells. And unlike most switches, it’s open-source, allowing customers to look for bugs, performance glitches or backdoors that might allow a government to peek inside.

SnapRoute plans to announce a $25 million round of funding Tuesday from AT&T Inc., Microsoft Corp., Lightspeed Venture Partners and Norwest Venture Partners. The startup counts Facebook among its customers.
[...]
Switches from SnapRoute are $30,000 to $40,000 cheaper than comparable brand-name models, Forrester said. And whereas switches from Cisco and other big suppliers can have tens of millions of lines of code, SnapRoute’s has just 22,000, he said. This means fewer features, so SnapRoute may not be an attractive option for some companies. But the simpler code makes it easier for customers to sift through in search of hidden spying devices."

Corporate Paranoia in the Snowden Era Leads to a Startup Boom - Bloomberg