Next thing you know, the tiny startup steps onto the stage in a tight partnership with a vendor that has huge volume in commodity servers, an enormous distribution network, and lots of datacenter customers.

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He predicts that Cisco's territory, which is the core of the computer network, will become a commodity whose value lies only in its ability to move bits as quickly as possible (although, to be fair to Cisco, it is a commodity that many firms would love to supply).

ECONOMIST: 3Com

Because SDN runs on commodity hardware, it could translate into siginficant savings for network operators.

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