There is a lot of buzz behind the theory that the future of enterprise IT is centered around a small number of companies who can provide solutions that integrate many of the key components of IT. This is the last in a series of newsletters that says if indeed that is the future, who will those companies be? In this newsletter we will look at Dell and IBM.
Dell had not been on our radar screen relative to being one of the future leaders of enterprise IT. The company made it to our radar screen when the rumor surfaced that after Dell lost out relative to acquiring 3Par they were thinking about acquiring Brocade.
On paper acquiring Brocade would give Dell a lot of key assets. Remember, Brocade was formed by merging together two silicon valley companies: Foundry Networks and Brocade. Foundry Networks brought a spate of networking products as well as application delivery controllers to the merged company. The old Brocade was strong in storage. Unfortunately, both Foundry Networks and the old Brocade had very different corporate cultures and in many ways it appears as if the merged company is really two companies sharing a logo.
It is hard to see how Dell, an Austin, Texas, company that is not really known as an enterprise-focused company could acquire Brocade and pull together a company that can create tightly integrated enterprise solutions. More likely, this would be a case in which the whole was at least somewhat less than the sum of the parts.
That brings us to IBM. IBM is clearly a leader in many areas of IT including servers of all sizes, storage, management and professional services. The irony is that the company that developed SNA roughly 40 years ago, and at one time ran a global wide area network, is basically devoid of networking products. What’s even more troubling is that the last time they tried to be a player in the enterprise networking market they failed abysmally.
While their recent acquisition of Blade Networks indicates that they are getting serious about networking, it is a very small step. It does not, for example, give them control over the aggregation and core switches that are key to data center networks. They clearly have the resources to make acquisitions. They could also continue to partner with companies such as Juniper. Will they be successful? Possibly, but it will not be easy.
