Untangle -> Arista

[Timur]

Hi everyone,

It's hard to believe, but it has been 6 months since Untangle was acquired by Arista Networks. I wanted to give you a quick update on what's been going on..

As I am sure you saw, after the acquisition we had a number of things we needed to do in order to update our UI and branding, which was a bit of a deviation from our roadmap... I am sure you've seen our website, Command Center, and all email communication have already flipped to Arista branding, and NGFW and Micro-Edge are coming very shortly.

We also had some changes that you hopefully have not noticed. We needed to make changes to our order processing to accommodate our products as part of Arista's Cognitive Unified Edge (CUE) offering and implement automated export compliance verification on checkout.

We are about to release Micro Edge 4.2, which includes the upgrade to OpenWRT 21.02, tunneling capabilities for IPSec, and a number of performance and stability improvements. We are also working on the 16.6 release of NGFW, which will include upgrade to Debian Bullseye, Arista Branding, and bug fixes.

While we did have to take some de-tours as part of the acquisition process, Arista has been very serious about putting additional resources towards our business.

We are hiring aggressively in engineering (cloud and networking - please reach out if you know someone) and have a pretty robust roadmap for the next couple of years.

We plan to continue expanding the functionality in Micro Edge. We also plan to add new features for NGFW, a lot of which are based on your feedback. Command Center is getting more attention as well, and we plan to introduce additional management capabilities for both NGFW and Micro Edge, as well as additional integrations for business processes. There has been quite a bit of work behind the scenes to update and migrate our infrastructure as well, which hopefully was transparent to you.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out.

More great stuff to come and we appreciate your support as we continue to scale our business!

Cheers,
Timur

[ChrisD.]

Great stuff.

Is there any updates with regards to home licensing moving forward?

[gravenscroft]

Is there any updates with regards to home licensing moving forward?

Not at the moment: stay the course, as it were. I know this is a concern for the home-user community and if anything's to change, we'll let you know as soon as possible.

[Timur]

Great stuff.

Is there any updates with regards to home licensing moving forward?

No updates - home licensing will continue as is.

Arista is definitely not a consumer company, so home licensing is not something we will focus on from a marketing perspective. However, we appreciate the support from our consumer base and hope you guys bring our products into your business.

Tk

[dashpuppy]

No updates - home licensing will continue as is.

Arista is definitely not a consumer company, so home licensing is not something we will focus on from a marketing perspective. However, we appreciate the support from our consumer base and hope you guys bring our products into your business.

Tk

Maybe you should explain to Heather & Scott that it's VERY IMPORTANT to keep it going, there are HUNDREADS of us that buy it for home use & implement it at work because we use / like..

100% sure if you guys drop Untangle home support a'lot of us will leave and move to other platforms at home & at work..

Hopefully this gains more attention.. If not, then those that predicted how Untangle / Arista is unfolding will be right..

[donhwyo]

There has been more transparency in the last few hours than in the last six months. Hope the trend continues.

"We are also working on the 16.6 release of NGFW, " What happened to 17.0? LOL

[jcoffin]

"We are also working on the 16.6 release of NGFW, " What happened to 17.0? LOL

No one ever mentioned 17.0 except you. How is your 17.0 going?

[gravenscroft]

"We are also working on the 16.6 release of NGFW, " What happened to 17.0? LOL

We usually save major version numbers for releases that have a new feature. As Timur notes, 16.6 is a Debian update, a rebrand, and some minor bug fixes.

[sky-knight]

We usually save major version numbers for releases that have a new feature. As Timur notes, 16.6 is a Debian update, a rebrand, and some minor bug fixes.

Yes, and a new OS is a major new feature. What you've done by choosing this number is injected unnecessary confusion into the upgrade process by hiding a dangerous upgrade. This will cause support issues, it ALWAYS does.

OS upgrades are the only upgrades NGFW in its history have every really had massive issues with upgrade completion. Any MSP utilizing the product has to plan around that reality, or have routers blowing up at random without a tech available.

Putting such releases at .0 is the easy way to ensure people see the upgrade and know, THIS is important, and I should deal with it accordingly.

*edit*

The above being said, everyone should know that I've done MANY Debian 10 to 11 upgrades. All of them via the usual Debian process of updating the apt configuration, and pulling an apt upgrade && apt dist-upgrade, and all of them came out the other side just fine without further input.

Debian 9 to Debian 10 did NOT go this well. So I actually have less concern personally over the next OS upgrade than I do this one. Untangle does have more complexity to manage, but it's not something they've not dealt with before as a company.

[MP715]

Maybe (hopefully) this is Arista's way of breaking out into the home market.

[mikeyscott]

Maybe (hopefully) this is Arista's way of breaking out into the home market.

Home market is a tuff market to crack and return a profit that pleases the board and shareholders. Cisco and Linksys is what comes to mind. Medium to enterprise has to be the primary focus I expect.

I was hoping Arista moved into Unifi’s space and kicked them into touch regarding that market space. Basket case support, basket case company.

I do think there is more consolidation of network/security market to come. If Untangle/Arista had been acquired by Thoma Bravo I’d left day one.

[sky-knight]

Hope market is a tuff market to crack and return a profit that pleases the board and shareholders. Cisco and Linksys is what comes to mind. Medium to enterprise has to be the primary focus I expect.

I was hoping Arista moved into Unifi’s space and kicked them into touch regarding that market space. Basket case support, basket case company.

I do think there is more consideration of network/security market to come. If Untangle/Arista had been acquired by Thoma Bravo I’d left day one.

Yeah I'm with you, Thoma Bravo gets involved, I'm out. Kaseya gets involved I'm out even faster. Those two organizations are a plague.

[Jemsnixon]

Keep going, as it were, for the time being. I recognise that the community of home users is concerned about this, and if anything should change, we'll let you know as quickly as possible.

[fearstart]

For the time being, just keep going. I understand that the home user community is concerned about this, and if anything changes, we will notify you as soon as possible. geometry dash

[dlsolo]

Random question (maybe not so random). What's next? NGFW and Micro Edge seem similar but distant. The ETM dashboard is great opportunities for growth and flexibility. I'm not very well versed in Arista and what the "mothership" has, but when does the excitement of Arista start bleeding through out NGFW?

I ask this in light that though NGFW works and has been working for my use-case for several years now, being a Debian based product, there is room for embedding some pretty slick functions/effects. Is anyone asking for this? Not sure, but it seems like things are trending that way.

I have a lot of great ideas but have no clue what is on the horizon. Is the NGFW we have today in its final form factor? I really hope not.

Just looking for some thoughts, insight, and maybe a product vision.... yeah, the vision is a stretch, I know....