Global Webscale Network R&D Report 2021: All Webscalers Spend Heavily on Network Infra, but Facebook is a Step Ahead

Key Facts

A rising portion of that R&D has targeted innovations in how their networks are built and operated.
As a group, webscalers invest an average of 10% of revenues into R&D, not far below pure play network-focused vendors like Cisco (12.9%), Ericsson (17.1%), and Nokia (18.7%), who, by design, are in the business of creating products for others to deploy.
It spends about 20% of revenues on R&D, twice the webscale average, and has long been more open to sharing innovations.
R&D budgets are the most visible metric of innovation, but webscalers can advance network infra technology in several ways: create new innovations for their own network, which are often then picked up by the rest of the industry (even telcos); share innovations with open source bodies like the OCP; license innovations for free to third parties; use their buying power to influence vendors to conduct R&D on their behalf; acquire promising startups; engage in joint development with other companies.