Cisco’s Virtualisation Move Gets A Mixed Reaction

Analysts: Cisco is on target

Analysts see the partnership as a mutually beneficial one: “[Unified Computing System] is a more integrated platform to deliver virtualization on; and now that Cisco is going to offer this directly in their solutions, this is another big plug for using things like VMware,” Jim Frey, an analyst with Enterprise Management Associates, said in an interview. “Cisco also needs to ride the virtualisation wave; without that, they don’t have a distinctive differentiation.”

Overall, Cisco faces some heated competition with its Unified Computing System, particularly when it comes to its new blade servers – perhaps one of the reasons why the company played down the rollout of the servers as part of its presentation.

“If they focus too much on the blade, they have to focus on competing on that front,” Frey said, adding that Cisco would be “walking into a vicious firefight” against blade vendors such as HP. However, “Cisco is in a position that the other blade server guys really aren’t – and they’re taking advantage of some of their capabilities.”

And if it focuses too much on servers, might mean Cisco take its eye off the ball in networking? “Cisco is certainly not taking their ‘eye off the ball’; they are merely pushing forward in a direction that they believe they must in order to survive the constant forces of commoditisation in the networking industry,” Frey said.

“By expanding into voice and video, they diversified and moved up the stack. By adding computing to their data centre solutions, they accomplish the same. Routing and switching in themselves are not growth markets for them – blade computing is a whole new frontier.”

Even with this move, Frey said, Cisco will not be providing “all things data centre; however, they will provide another key piece to complement their strength in data centre networking and network security. What this does represent is a compelling new set of technology options that will certainly change the landscape of both data centre computing and networking,” Frey said.

Principal analyst Galen Schreck of Forrester Research agreed with Frey: “I don’t think they’d be really taking its eye off the networking ball for a couple reasons,” Schreck told eWEEK. “No. 1: Cisco has a colossal amount of resources dedicated to selling network infrastructure. I don’t think those investments have been meaningfully affected by this product launch.

“No. 2: I would argue that Cisco is actually protecting (or growing) its data centre networking turf. The advent of virtual switches inside VMware ESX and devices like HP’s VirtualConnect could dilute Cisco’s ability to create end-to-end network infrastructure that is managed under one umbrella, and offers policies that follow applications throughout the data centre.

“In other words, they are also protecting their networking business by moving into this space. Virtualisation (and newer blade systems) are causing a collision between what used to be two separate silos,” Schreck said.