An innocuous Cisco blog post appears to have inadvertently revealed the networking giant’s plans to extend support for the software for open networking in the cloud (SONiC) standard beyond hyperscale customers.

Spotted initially by The Register, the blog post penned by networking engineering SVP Will Eatherton states that Cisco’s N9000 data center switch line is “expanding” to include a SONiC foundation.

The N9000 was unveiled back at Cisco Live EMEA, powered by its Silicon One G300 ASIC. The addition of SONiC sees Cisco look to “extend flexibility” for data center customers operating either AI or non-AI clusters.

“Today, SONiC runs at large scale on Cisco platforms across hyperscaler AI clusters, cloud providers, and service providers, demonstrating that it is ready for production roles well beyond early trials,” Eatherton wrote.

SONiC was developed by Microsoft before being bestowed upon the Open Compute Project (OCP) in 2016. Stewardship of the SONiC project would later shift to the Linux Foundation.

Many of Cisco’s rivals also support the open source project, including Arista Networks, Broadcom, and, more recently, Nokia and the now Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)-owned Juniper Networks.

Cisco has long backed the project, with product lines like its 8223 routers, but SONiC has long been synonymous with hyperscalers, owing to their needs for immense scalability and customization in their network infrastructure. That, however, is set to change, with Cisco looking to bring that open networking foundation to a much broader customer base.

A Cisco spokesperson told The Register that Eatherton’s blog post is in effect a declaration that general availability for SONiC support is forthcoming.

“Whether the customer is a hyperscaler, a neocloud, or an enterprise modernizing a brownfield environment, SONiC delivers open networking control and transparency with enterprise-grade performance – backed by our upstream contributions, Silicon One ASIC integration, and flexible consumption models,” the exec wrote. “SONiC has truly evolved from an experiment into a proven, strategic foundation.”