Pronto Systems

Pronto Systems

Pronto Systems is a new generation of switch vendor, carrying out an unique vision. The ultimate goals of Pronto Systems is to enable the innovation to the switches products, and produce higher performance, better software quality, richer feature set, and lower cost.

How does Pronto do it?

The traditional switch products use embedded systems, with proprietary (and usually outdated) operating system and proprietary (also outdated) software stacks. The hardware has mostly migrated to off-the-shelf controllers and PHYs. Some vendors, such as Cisco and Brocade still develop their own proprietary and expensive switching chips, whose performance is years behind the new generation chips from Broadcom and Marvell.

With this observation, Pronto is set to develop open platforms that allow software developers, such as Pica8 Xorplus, to develop and deploy software to drive the high performance switching chips from off-the-shelf vendors, such as Broadcom and Marvell.

The results?

• High performance - All Pronto switches use data center grade of switching chips], which come with higher switching rate, bigger buffer, and better features than the comparable switches from embedded vendors.
• Better Software Quality - All Pronto switches support mainstream Linux Operating System, which has better quality and provide more protection than the traditional (outdated) embedded systems. With open source software like Pica8 Xorplus, users can get bug fixes in hours, not months like traditional embedded systems.
• More Features - With open software like Pica8 Xorplus, users can freely extend the software to build innovative network architecture.
• Lower Cost - By going open software and hardware, Pronto can reduce 80% of the switch cost. Why would users continue to pay 80% of markup to get an outdated software and underperformed hardware?