Enabling Sustainable Advantage-Is the Key for Organizational Success Date:   Thursday , December 04, 2014 Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET), is a cloud service providers and next-generation data centers for enterprises. The company, headquartered in Menlo Park, CA and founded in 2004, has a market cap of $ 4.83 billion. The industry is witnessing many trends, with the cloud and mobile being the most significant. In fact, these technologies are changing the world at a rapid pace. Following the advent of mobile technology, simple tasks such as filing taxes or buying groceries that used to take hours are now a few clicks away. Interestingly,the way Internet is being used is likely to evolve further, bringing in constant changes. Coming to cloud, services reliant on cloud would develop further and go on to define future, whether delivered internally or via public cloud services. Another authoritative trend is Cloud Networking, which facilitates interconnection of servers and storage in a Cloud platform, in order to deliver higher resiliency, performance and scale to enable the best user experience. However, there is still enough room for improvement, from a technological point of view. There is no denying that enterprises have evolved over decades to be fiercely competitive in their own domains. Yet, IT practices in the same companies are far away from that of the largest cloud providers. This time is ripe for a change with respect to automation and modern tools. The reality is that such a transition would not be easy, as the entire operations model needs to change, thereby requiring a transition period. Thus, the greatest technological need is the operational model for IT and not merely a simple technology. The Key Challenges Enabling a sustainable advantage for customers as well as the firm is the key for companies to thrive. This necessitates for high-level innovation, both in technology that are produced for the world, and the way organizations are structured. A related challenge is ensuring security in the cloud era, where data could be stored and accessed from many devices in the absence of the traditional enterprise monitoring. The solution to these problems is not just a new technology but also a cultural shift in the way one empowers employees to make their own decisions. Hiring and retaining top talent is an age-old issue that all leaders have to encounter. Moreover, entrepreneurs face the permanent task to implement innovation at rapid pace to stay ahead of competition, especially in an era wherein the gap between competitors seems to be narrowing in many industries, at the same time. Emergence of new technologies has been the driving force behind these technologies. Unlocking Innovative Ideas At Arista, all employees, including developers, systems engineers, and support engineers are encouraged to come up with their own ideas and experiment with those ideas. Ensuring that early feedback is constantly sought from customers to validate these concepts and go ahead and build the most appealing ones. The importance of breaking down the traditional organizational boundaries. The inventors should remain close to the customer as well as gain first-hand information on problems prevailing in the current era.