Yesterday, I — and others — drew the connection between IBM courting Sun, and Cisco’s burgeoning aspirations in the data center. More specifically, Cisco’s launch of an internally developed blade server and its weighty influence as a virtual data center networking monopoly is helping to drive server leader IBM to tie up with No. 4 server maker Sun (IDC numbers).
Now, consultant and enterpreneur Sramana Mitra is blogging on HP’s options in light of the blade server packaged within Cisco’s new Unified Computing System: should HP buy Brocade?
Mitra argues that with Brocade’s acquisition of Foundry, it offers “strong competition to Cisco” in the an end-to-end data center portfolio. HP is a Brocade OEM customer, just as IBM and EMC are — in fact, the three account for 65% of Brocade’s latest quarterly revenue, Mitra says.
And not only will HP/Brocade “stall Cisco’s data center plans” like an IBM/Sun union would, it will also create a more formidable competitor to IBM/Sun, she suggests.
Mitra never comes right out and says it should happen though. But what’s to lose? HP’s sitting on over $11 billion in cash and Brocade’s worth just over $1 billion, with about $1.2 billion in debt. It wouldn’t have to wait for ProCurve to catch up with data center-optimized switches of its own — although, we hear that wait might be short.
I say, let the consolidation begin! HP can benefit from Brocade’s leading position in SAN fabric switches and Foundry’s presence in the data center core. ProCurve can focus on the top-of-rack/end-of-row opportunity — or stay out of the data center and focus on the enterprise workgroup core and wiring closets, where it is already building momentum.
Either way, there will have to be some rationalization between the Foundry and ProCurve switches. But opportunity is not without risk.
Separately, there’s a rather humorous and revealing post on ServerWatch about how companies’ proactive but overly zealous PR campaigns can backfire. Drew Robb writes that because HP and Brocade preemptively dismissed Cisco’s UCS, he and others were even more curious to check out what Cisco had. The vendors’ efforts to deflect attention from it actually attracted people to it.
The announcements by HP, Brocade and others to “please do not pay attention under any circumstances,” no doubt enticed many to find out ALL about it.
Later, he adds:
It’s almost PR 101 that if you condemn something too forcefully you tend to engender strong interest. So go ahead and find out more about the new Cisco blades. If you are planning a new data center, check out the Cisco UCS platform and see if it is right for you. After all, Brocade and HP thoroughly recommend it!
Bingo.
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