Technology tends to arrive in waves, and in the software-defined networking space, a third wave of change is about to break upon enterprise shores.

It started with Nicira Inc., which was bought for $1.26 billion in 2012 by VMware Inc. and turned into the virtualized networking solution NSX. The second wave was represented by data center networking providers, such as Big Switch, acquired by Arista Networks Inc. in February, and Cumulus Networks, which was scooped up by Nvidia Corp. in May.

The third generation of software-defined networking involves disaggregation, chips, and other networking technologies melded together with software and sold separately. This is part of the market represented by Pensando Systems Inc. with a key target in mind: edge computing.

“It started in the public cloud, but then you have another trend taking hold, which is the edge of the network,” said Scott Raynovich (pictured), founder and chief analyst at Futuriom. “Amazon is building out their Outposts. Microsoft has an edge stack in Azure. All of these public cloud providers are pushing the cloud out to the edge with this infrastructure. That’s the opportunity that Pensando is going after.”

Raynovich spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during Pensando’s Future Proof Your Enterprise event. They discussed examples of how edge processing technologies will be applied and Pensando’s solution using a network interface card. (* Disclosure below.)

Getting closer to the edge

The battle for the network edge will rest significantly on which companies can capitalize on use cases with a demonstrable return on investment. This could include big-box retailers seeking to connect with customers in-store or complex, data-driven systems, such as those found in autonomous cars.

“It’s about pushing these compute and data services closer to customers at the edge, having very low latency and lots of resources there, compute, storage and networking,” Raynovich explained. “Autonomous vehicles need to connect to the edge and have self-driving and very low latency services close to them. You might not have time to go back to the public cloud to get the data.”

Pensando’s technology is based on a Distributed Services Card that can provide a suite of software-defined services at the edge, and it’s highly customizable.

“Pensando is going after this networking opportunity using the P4 networking language, a specialized ASIC, and a network interface card that they think is going to accelerate processing and networking at the edge,” Raynovich said.

What would constitute success for Pensando according to the Futuriom analyst? “I want to see that it works and that people are buying it,” Raynovich concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Pensando’s Future Proof Your Enterprise event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Future Proof Your Enterprise event. Neither Pensando Systems Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Scott Raynovich