Site Editor Jeff Caruso helps you make sense of the evolving world of LANs and routers.
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.
Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.
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Comments (5)
Cisco as a VM providerBy Cliif the Fed on March 17, 2009, 9:00 amI am absolutely fascinated with this prospect, as building an entire data center in a blade chassis (minus big time storage) is now possible without having to invest...
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Non-CiscoBy non-cisco shop on March 17, 2009, 9:55 amSince the 1980's, I have watched and been disgusted as cisco has found verticle after verticle to go after. They will do about a 60% as good a job as the other players,...
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Cisco's done it before...By Anonymous on March 17, 2009, 10:39 amI read with interest your comments regarding can Cisco win against established companies in a new market. They did a pretty good job at beating IBM when they were...
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Seems like the kind of opening that Juniper needs to steal netwoBy Anonymous on March 17, 2009, 12:10 pmSeems like the kind of opening that Juniper needs to steal networking business away from Cisco while they are precoccupied with something outside their core capabilities.
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Did any of you actually READ the annoucement?By Anon on March 17, 2009, 10:35 pmI'm wondering if the editor of this article (or some of you) have actually read or watched the announcement or just read regurgitated internet articles??? This...
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