Cisco as underdog

Cisco's foray into blade servers puts it in new territory

Cisco's designs on the data center became fully public yesterday, leaving many observers trying to figure out if the news was really as monumental as it seemed to be.

Cisco unveiled its "Unified Computing System," which marks the company's debut into the blade server market and is a greater attempt to bring computing, storage and networking under one umbrella - a Cisco umbrella.

Some - including some Network World readers - indicated that Cisco has never really understood the challenge of management, and that good management tools are not optional when it comes to a complex and virtualized server environment such as this.

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Cisco's designs on the data center became fully public yesterday, leaving many observers trying to figure out if the news was really as monumental as it seemed to be.

Cisco unveiled its "Unified Computing System," which marks the company's debut into the blade server market and is a greater attempt to bring computing, storage and networking under one umbrella - a Cisco umbrella.

Some - including some Network World readers - indicated that Cisco has never really understood the challenge of management, and that good management tools are not optional when it comes to a complex and virtualized server environment such as this.

The answer to that challenge is that Cisco has gotten in bed with BMC, and may be looking to buy the management software company. Cisco may have to, if it wants to be taken seriously.

Some indicated that Cisco is late to the party. They argue that HP, IBM and others are selling blade servers and doing just fine, leveraging their reputations in servers and obtaining the networking piece elsewhere. Cisco, they say, has an uphill climb with buyers who aren't ready to make the leap that a networking vendor can sell servers. (Interestingly, Cisco says it considered IBM and HP for its blade server.) 

I was skeptical that Cisco could really attempt to go against those vendors head on, and thought that Cisco would possibly focus on narrow applications. Perhaps that's how it will be at first, but the company seems to have its sights set on the bigger fight.

Does Cisco have a chance? Can it go from zero market share in servers today to take on companies more than twice its size? Is Cisco crazy for trying, or is this its best option to keep up its brisk growth rate?

Let me know what you think.

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