Fun Alert: Insane 2011 Predictions That May Come True

December 29, 2010 4 Comments

Google Acquires Level 3 Communications

Really?  Forget net-neutrality, think fiber and capacity management.  Google gains a worldwide network and a host of services and options to redefine the Internet.  Google’s itching for another industry to transform, and the service provider market is ripe for the picking.  By streamlining processes, costs, and creating a true cloud, Google can change the game while laying the foundation for some incredible mobile products and services.

Apple Acquires Sony Corporation

Why?  How about content, home entertainment, consumer electronics, and more.  Imagine Sony TV’s pre-loaded with Apple TV or PS3 with an ‘Apple-like’ interface.  Apple would gain content via Sony Pictures, cameras, a massive distribution channel, and control of standards, patents, and more.  In the end, Apple would restore Sony to their former glory while drastically expanding their breadth and depth of products.

Cisco Acquires SAVVIS

Huh?  As Cisco is dead serious about the cloud and Infrastructure as a service, purchasing SAVVIS would give Cisco a ‘enterprise-class converged cloud solution.’  Plus, SAVVIS is a huge Cisco customer and early adopter, so Cisco wouldn’t’ need to swap out hardware as UCS is already in-play here.  Cisco gains data center expertise, IAAS, SAAS, Hosting, Content Management, and more while moving ever closer to end-customer and consumer.

Dell Acquires Brocade

Are you kidding me?  Dell needs an Ethernet and storage networking presence and they need it right now.  By purchasing Brocade and integrating their product sets, Dell can finally go toe-to-toe with HP and IBM.  Additionally, Foundry products finally get the sales and distribution channel they need to compete with Cisco, HP, and Juniper.  Dell would streamline manufacturing, sales, marketing, and more to create a viable alternative to HP’s growing ProCurve business.

Baidu Buys Yahoo

Never!  Baidu (the student) comes into the US Market flush with cash to buy Yahoo (the teacher).  Baidu would gain a US presence while putting their thumb in Google’s eye.  Yahoo gets an injection of cash and swagger, as they focus on platform services and open source projects.  Meanwhile, Microsoft quietly wins here as they continue to work with Yahoo/Baidu and expand their Chinese presence.

Huawei Buys Juniper

Come on?  Shunned by Dell, Juniper has little options as IBM refuses to enter the networking hardware business.  Huawei desperately wants to enter the North American Market, and Juniper’s name and mix of service provider and enterprise customers are just the ticket.  Huawei would quickly ramp up Juniper’s product line while introducing new lines of business including wireless carrier infrastructure, storage networking, and more.

Oracle Buys NetApp

Finally something we can agree on!  While Oracle/Sun have some amazing storage products, NetApp gives Oracle legitimate world-class storage solutions.  Oracle could leverage NetApp within their next generation ‘Exa’ products while refining how Oracle products perform on NetApp storage.  Meanwhile, Oracle/NetApp will make billions from FlexPods while moving closer to Cisco.

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Can Cisco Eat their EMC and Have Their NetApp To?

December 17, 2010 Leave a comment

With 2010 nearing a close, could Cisco be contemplating another major acquisition to complete their next generation datacenter portfolio?  The last glaring hole within Cisco’s portfolio is their reliance on outside vendors for storage solutions.

Over the past few months, Cisco has patiently watched as HP purchased 3Par, EMC purchased Isilon, and Dell is acquiring Compellent.  Meanwhile, EMC’s arch nemesis NetApp continues to grow and innovate in a tough economy.

Further complicating matters, is Cisco’s reliance on the VCE, a partnership between VMware, Cisco, EMC, and Intel.  It is no coincidence that the current Vblock VCE Reference Architectures specifies EMC storage offerings (CLARiiON, Symmetrix, and Celerra).

Not to be left out of the party, NetApp entered into  ‘collaboration’ with Cisco and VMware creating FlexPod that delivers ‘leading computing, networking, storage, and infrastructure software components’.  It seems that Cisco isn’t the only one hedging their bets as VMware exerts a rebellious streak against their parent (EMC).

Cisco’s future hinges around UCS being adopted as a true next generation computing platform without legacy baggage.  Cisco did not go to war with HP while potentially jeopardizing their relationship with IBM only to be saddled with the competing interests of three large companies.

In the past, I have speculated that Cisco should simply purchase EMC thereby owing a majority stake in VMware.  However is NetApp a better choice?  After all, does VMware need to maintain a ‘Microsoft’ level of independence from the server vendors?  Would HP, IBM, Dell, etc. be inclined to sell a product that lines the pocket of Cisco?

Only Chambers (ok perhaps Ellison as well) would be as bold to acquire an enemy of one of their strategic partners.  By acquiring NetApp, Cisco would be able to offer innovative solutions such as storage blades for UCS or even accelerate the adoption of FCoE.  Imagine a new Cisco Architecture with Cisco UCS, Cisco Nexus, Cisco MDS, Cisco FlexPod, and Cisco Management with the availability of VMware, Citrix, Red Hat, or Microsoft virtualization.

In the end, Cisco could offer a true end-to-end solution as they continue to lead within the edge and core routing markets with near dominance in the switching market.  Furthermore, Cisco would stand alone as the only integrated next generation data center provider that does not develop or sell enterprise class applications such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, etc.  In effect, they become the Switzerland of computing against their rivals.

The only question is how long will Cisco be able to ‘Eat their EMC and have their NetApp to’? Don’t look now, but perhaps Larry (Oracle) will crash this party and make the decision for then.

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IBM Throws a Pebble at Cisco UCS; Buys Blade Networks

September 27, 2010 Leave a comment

In the wake of increasing competition from the likes of Cisco, HP, vEMC (VMware plus EMC), IBM responds by purchasing Blade Networks.  For those who have never heard of Blade Networks, Blade was mercifully spun out of Nortel Networks and has hundreds of customers and several hardware OEM deals.  Coincidentally, I think not, Blade has been a long time partner of both IBM and IBM/Netezza.

After years of transforming themselves into a software/services company, IBM is being forced back into the networking business.   While some have postulated that “IBM has turned their back on Juniper Networks”, the reality is Juniper’s baggage may be too big for even IBM to swallow.  Additionally, IBM’s purchase of Blade Networks is a pebble across the bow of Cisco and will do little to anger one of their most strategic partners.

Blade gives IBM a converged networking fabric company while eliminating their competitors from Blade’s technology; namely HP, NEC, and SGI.  Additionally, Blade provides IBM a way to ‘dip their toe in the water’ to see if the market, customers, and partners approve of this new direction.  If IBM is truly looking to challenge UCS or Matrix, then they need additional pieces to this puzzle.

What IBM needs is a new platform ala Cisco UCS that eliminates the baggage of the original blade systems; optimized for density and space.  They must examine how to better integrate their storage platforms with their blades using FCoE and perhaps should look towards a true Multi-Hop FCoE solution.  They must revolutionize virtualization and I/O as perhaps no one else on this planet has the experience, patents, and real world deployments as IBM.  Finally, IBM has the opportunity to rethink management by acquiring, integrating, and refining their current solutions.

If IBM needs a little inspiration, then they can look to their long time bitter enemy Oracle.  While virtualization, fabrics, networking, server chassis, and storage is interesting, applications are still king.  Oracle’s vision is clear; you can run our apps on any server or virtualization platform you want, but it just runs better on Oracle.

The last time I checked, IBM is still Big Blue and they have an arsenal of technology at their disposal.  The question is  ‘if’ and ‘when’ IBM will wake from their slumber and lead the industry once again.  Aside from a blockbuster merger between IBM and Cisco, … hey, one can dream… your move Dell.

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Oracle Takes Dead Aim At VMware’s Vision

September 20, 2010 1 Comment

Still wondering why Oracle purchased Sun?  Day One of Oracle’s OpenWorld 2010 cleared up at least one reason; Oracle has its own “stack” and it does not include VMware. 

When Sun was originally purchased by Oracle, my attention immediately fell to Sun’s virtualization assets and engineering talents.  Before the acquisition, Sun was amassing an arsenal of virtualization and management assets including xVM, VirtualBox, and Solaris.  If you factor in hardware development and JAVA, then Sun had everything they needed to “change the world.”  That is, everything except a track record for translating engineering into revenue.

Love him or hate him, Larry Ellison has no such issues.  His track record speaks for itself as Oracle has an uncanny ability to execute.  With the launch of Exalogic Elastic Compute Cloud, Oracle has signaled to the market that they are ready for a fight.  While most believe Oracle is gunning for Amazon Web Services, I believe hidden in their messages and jabs at IBM is their true target of public, private, and hybrid clouds ala VMware.

VMware unleashed their vision of the future at VMworld 2010 that included vSphere, vDirector, vCloud, vFabric, SpringSource, and more.  What’s missing?   Oracle would point to VMware’s ratio of vision to products, their lack of owning an operating system, and their dependency on third parties to deliver server power (I’ll give them storage as EMC is VMware’s parent company).  Oracle’s vision is unique in that they control the entire Cloud stack using proven technologies and deployments; unleashing the potential of Sun hardware, JAVA, and Fusion.

Exalogic Elastic Compute Cloud has a few things going for it:

  • Power – Scale Out and Scale In  
    Cores 96 to 2880, SSD 256GB to 7.7TB, RAM 768GB to 22.4TB, and SAS disk 40TB to 320TB
  •  Applications – JAVA and Fusion
     Oracle’s Applications as well as others that run on Oracle Solaris and Oracle Linux

Although, I’m not thrilled with Oracle’s reliance on InfiniBand, it makes sense given Sun’s product portfolio and expertise.  Also, we need to learn more about how you manage this system including orchestration via business process management solutions.  However, this is a great start for Oracle. 

One last thought, Oracle took a subtle jab at VMware, EMC, and Cisco when they proclaimed, “Run 1000s of existing applications” and “No Certification Required.”  Perhaps Ellison should not be picking a fight with Mr. Chambers at Cisco.  For the common denominator of vBlocks (VMware, xBlocks (Citrix), and rBlocks (Red Hat) is UCS and its momentum may be unstoppable.

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Three Cheers: Cisco Unleashes a UCS Surprise with ‘xBlocks’

September 14, 2010 Leave a comment

With today’s webcast and subsequent announcements, Cisco showed their continued focus and commitment to the UCS platform.  The results are breathtaking; a new B230 M1 ½ blade with 16 cores and 2048/4096GB of memory, a new Nexus 5500 series that doubles the port density of the previous generation 1U models for up to 960Gbps of throughput, and virtual appliances for both Virtual Security and WAAS.  Perhaps the most interesting announcement of the webcast focused on VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) sporting a partnership between Cisco, Citrix, and NetApp that I’m dubbing xBlocks.

Like vBlocks, xBlocks maintain their own Reference Architecture that was jointly developed by Citrix and NetApp and validated by Cisco as a CVD (Cisco Validated Design).  Unlike vBlocks, xBlocks shed VMware for Citrix and offer an implementation based on Citrix’s XenDesktop infrastructure.  Additionally EMC is swapped for NetApp as they are the perfect non-competitive complement to Citrix.

While Cisco is heavily invested in VMware, this announcement demonstrates Cisco’s desire to broaden the UCS audience.  Of course, this isn’t the first time Cisco has ventured from VMware’s path as in June of 2010 Cisco announced a strengthening of their relationship with Red Hat and their KVM hypervisor.

Finally, Cisco confirmed 1700 UCS customers worldwide with 200 Unified Computing Authorized Technology Providers (ATP).  This means that Cisco almost doubled the total number of UCS customers from the quarter before.  If anyone doubted Cisco’s ability to disrupt the server market, then these numbers clearly demonstrate that Cisco is succeeding at an alarming rate to their competitors.

Is Cisco blowing up the old notion that innovation only comes from start-ups or small companies?  Are Chambers’ course corrections leading to a right hand turn and the complete transformation of an industry giant?  Is HP focused on this market or are they too busy buying and integrating companies?  Is Larry pacing his mansion contemplating how to leverage Sun to get into this fight?

Three cheers to Cisco:  innovators without baggage, partnerships without exclusivity, and a platform that is breathtaking.  What’s next, I can’t wait!

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Vblocks: The Icing on Cisco UCS’s Cake

September 9, 2010 Leave a comment

While Cisco, EMC, and VMware are excellent communicators, when it comes to Acadia they have missed the mark.  Acadia is the triumvirate’s joint venture that is headed by Michael Capellas of Compaq/HP fame.  Acadia’s tag line is Your Bridge To The Private Cloud and they are the guardians of the mythical Vblock Infrastructure Packages.

Acadia leverages the Vblock reference architecture that has been published by Cisco, EMC, and VMware.  The concept is to transform your datacenter into a giant grid with defined units that provide a set of services, with service levels, to a set of customers.  Vblocks allow for the rapid deployment of pre-integrated and validated solutions.  Currently there are over 300 Enterprise applications that are explicitly supported with over 20 supported operating systems.

Furthermore, the Vblocks have been organized into ‘levels’ that define the size and scope of their deployment.  Vblock 0 is an entry-level configuration designed for small datacenters, Vblock 1 is a mid-sized configuration, and Vblock 2 is a high-end configuration.  What comprises a Vblock and why should I care?

A Vblock is comprised of the following components:

  • Compute – Cisco UCS
  • Network – Cisco Nexus & MDS
  • Storage – EMC CLARiion
  • Hypervisor – VMware vSphere
  • Management – Various (VMware, Cisco, EMC, and 3rd Party ISVs)
  • Applications and Operating Systems

Why you should care is because Vblocks have the potential to fundamentally change how you deploy, test/validate, provide DR, guarantee SLAs, and purchase applications running within your datacenter.  It’s a tall order with an incredibly ambitious agenda, but the rewards are huge.  No longer will organizations have to test/validate configurations or define upgrade and back-up procedures for deployed applications as this has been completed ahead of time courtesy of Acadia and Vblocks.

While Cloud is becoming the most overused term next to CMDB, in this case it’s at least in the ballpark.  For the Cisco UCS architecture, coupled with the EMC’s V-Max, utilizing VMware’s Hypervisor is an awesome platform to provide public, private, or hybrid-cloud applications.  Furthermore, Acadia looks to take advantage of enhancements in Cisco UCS and VMware’s newly announced vDirector product.

The open question remains Acadia’s ability to execute and Cisco, EMC, and VMware’s ability to play nice together.  In the end, Vblocks are the icing on Cisco UCS’s Cake and provide more fire to Cisco’s feud with HP.

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VMware Two Years Later: A Microsoftian Transformation

September 7, 2010 1 Comment

It’s hard to believe, but two years ago I wrote a blog post railing against VMware’s assertion that the operating system was dead.  This was about the same time that the great VMware exodus occurred and VMware replaced Diane Greene with Paul Maritz an ex-Microsoft executive.

What do you do when you are backed into a corner?  You release an upgrade that breaks your install base.  You fire your CEO and begin to lose key personnel.   Hire a Microsoft Executive to become your new CEO because he’ll be out of a job soon.  Pick a fight with the largest software company on earth.  Awake the sleeping giants in IBM, Sun, HP, and more as they want their slice of the pie.  Finally, you bring your most loyal customers to VMworld and proclaim that you are still the king.

Looking back, I failed to understand the transformation that VMware was about to begin.  As a technologist, it’s hard to accept that great technology does not equate to great profits.  VMware’s leadership understood this and set down a path to become the new Microsoft.  I write this with the highest respect and admiration as few software companies in the world have achieved the growth rates, sustainability, profits, and broad market presence as Microsoft.

Today, VMware is a marketing driven technology company.  Look no further than VMworld 2010 as an example of this transformation.  While there were labs and hard-core technology sessions, the message was always on-point and precise, Virtual Roads. Actual Clouds.  While cultivating a legion of developers and partners, VMware repeated that “if you want it cheaper, faster, better” then you’d buy it from them.

While I do not always agree with VMware’s vision of the future, it would be foolish to dismiss their plans and underestimate their marketing efforts.  VMware’s plans fall heavily on “The New Infrastructure”; it looks and feels a lot like the old Microsoft as “The New Infrastructure” is made up of VMware’s lucrative products and powerful partners like EMC, Cisco, Google, and Salesforce.

Give credit where credit is due, Maritz and VMware have done a masterful job in transforming the company while painting an obtainable vision of the future.   In order to make the transformation complete, VMware must cultivate one final group, the application vendors. For once the “old guard” embraces the “new cloud” paradigm, the world will forever change and the provider of this technology is going to be worth billions and billions of dollars.

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