Moving To The Cloud: The Last Easy Decision

March 1, 2011 1 Comment

By now, you’ve read all the analyst reports, news articles, press releases, and blogger ramblings regarding the benefits of cloud computing.  Begrudgingly, you understand that although Cloud Computing began as a marketing fad, the technology behind it is real and is here to stay.

Perhaps you are dabbling in virtualization while considering upgrading your aging networking and storage equipment.  You wonder about the risks associated with moving aggressively toward this new type of infrastructure while considering migrating entire services to Application Cloud providers such as Service-now, Salesforce, or Microsoft’s new Cloud offerings.

Privately, you worry about the demands and pressures placed on your current IT staff.  If Cloud computing is going to work then you must find a way to tear down the silos that have existed for decades.  A successful transition will require not only a well thought out plan but the flawless execution of said plan.

Finally, you wonder what role Amazon EC2, Rackspace, AT&T, Verizon, SAVVIS, and others will play in your future.  Costs are one thing, security and reliability is another.  After all, even Google struggles to provide the vaunted 5 9’s of reliability.  Even if you find the perfect provider, will they remain independent or fall victim to the inevitable consolidation of the industry?

Weighing all the risks, you decide to build a private cloud first while eyeing the benefits of a hybrid or public cloud architecture.  Confidently, you call in your IT Directors or Managers and instruct them to provide you with a detailed cost analysis of building your new architecture.

Unfortunately, the easy part is over; where do you begin?  Do you start with picking a server or compute vendor or a storage vendor?  Do you call in your trusted networking vendor to understand what they have to offer?  Do you exit your comfort zone and call one of these newer vendors with cloud ready equipment?

The server team loves HP and is pushing Matrix, but you’ve read a lot about Cisco UCS, Dell Datacenter/Cloud Solutions, and IBM’s new Blade offerings.  The storage team loves EMC, but you’re intrigued by HP’s purchase of 3Par and Dell’s purchase of Compellent, not to mention NetApp.  Your storage networking team is loyal to Brocade, but if you purchase Cisco UCS then why not implement the Nexus and MDS?  Your networking team is partial to Cisco and are all certified Cisco engineers, but you wonder if Brocade, Juniper, or upstarts like Aristra are the way to go?   Unified fabric or Qfabric?  Fibre channel, ISSCI, or fiber channel over Ethernet?  What about the impacts of multi-hop fiber channel over Ethernet?  Is it time to upgrade your power, cooling, cabling, racks, too?

Next come even tougher questions regarding the software vendors.  Do you choose Microsoft, VMware, Citrix, Red Hat, or Oracle, as your virtualization vendor?  Are your current software vendors certified on these platforms?  You’ve been reading about Vblocks, could this help or does it force you into purchasing Cisco, EMC, and VMware?  What about open source alternatives?

Finally, how do Openstack, Eucalyptus, and Nimbula fit into this equation?  What’s Dell UEC or Opscode’s Chef?   What do you do for backup and disaster recovery?  How are you going to manage and monitor this?  Can you really get a single pane of glass?  Can anyone really handle the dynamic nature of a Cloud where everything from networking to storage to servers to applications are all virtualized?  What about security?

Yes, Cloud computing is as revolutionary and as disruptive as you have been reading.  However, never underestimate the complexity or magnitude of the decisions you must make to implement this marvelous architecture.  In the end, the easiest decision you will make is to move to the Cloud.

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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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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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Cisco’s New Data Center Products Trump HP’s New Avaya Partnership

June 30, 2010 3 Comments

HP continues to plug-the-holes against Cisco by signing a three-year agreement with Avaya.  The agreement calls for HP sales and services teams to be trained and certified in Avaya call center and unified communications.  HP sales teams will have the ability to resell Avaya and offer outsourced management.

What’s interesting about this announcement is that HP now has agreements with multiple competitors for the next generation data center including Brocade and Avaya.  If you add the potential overlap between Avaya and Alcatel-Lucent mixed with a bit of Microsoft then you have the danger of some explosive conflict.  Of course, HP is no stranger to handling this type of conflict.  However, would a future Avaya acquisition make better strategic sense for HP?

Meanwhile, as HP strengthens their partnerships, Cisco strengthens their next generation data center arsenal.  Once again, Cisco has trumped their competitors by introducing FabricPath, a superset of the emerging IETF standard called Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL).  Remember, Brocade is committed to TRILL within their recently announced Brocade Virtual Cluster Switching (VCS).

FabricPath is an upgrade to NX-OS that combines the best of layer-3 routing and layer-2 switching allowing for scaleable data centers with predictable network performance.  Take the following example from Cisco that was featured in an article by Kevin Komiega in InfoStor:

“With spanning-tree you have multiple links which are blocked and a high level of oversubscription. With FabricPath you can build a scalable, flat, non-blocking network with two layers and no oversubscription with a 16X improvement in bandwidth performance,” says Nikhil Kelshikar, product marketing manager for Cisco Nexus 7000 Solutions.

Additionally, FabricPath and Cisco’s new F-Series modules for the Nexus 7000 allow Cisco to combine six Nexus 7000 switches into a single product.  Cisco is offering a pre-packaged solution called FabricPath Switching System (FSS) that can be grouped in clusters of eight to allow for 160Tbps of raw switching capacity.  Wow, did I just write that?  Not to mention the fact that Cisco just took the air out of Juniper’s Stratus Unified Fabric.

If that wasn’t enough, Cisco announced the availability of a software release of WAAS that can be run as on on-demand service on the Cisco ISR.   Next, Cisco rolled-out new cloud deployment professional services and Cisco introduced a new Catalyst 4948-E Switch with increased capacity, performance, and automation.

Finally, Cisco is introducing Cisco Intelligent Automation Solutions for IT Services.  Building on Cisco’s acquisition of Tidal Software, Inc., they are releasing new versions of the Tidal Enterprise Scheduler and Tidal Enterprise Orchestrator.  As any reader of this blog knows, I am very interested in the autonomic aspects of the next generation data center and I hope to obtain additional information about this solution.

In this latest round of the battle for the next generation data center, Cisco’s products trump HP’s partnerships.

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Quick Alert: HP and Brocade; “…Be Nice Until It’s Time to Not Be Nice…”

June 24, 2010 Leave a comment

The HP Technology Forum 2010 is in full swing as HP and Brocade continue to “be nice” and reaffirm their decade old partnership.  According to Brocade’s press release, “…Brocade and HP enjoy the largest SAN customer base with over 3.5 million HP B-series ports installed.”  Note: HP OEM’s Brocade’s technology under the HP StorageWorks brand.

What did they announce? A new 64-port 8Gbps Fibre Channel module for HP’s StorageWorks SAN switches, a new host bus adapter card for HP’s BladeSystem C-class servers, and a the availability of HP StorageWorks P2000 G3 Smart Array that creates a deployment ready bundle of storage arrays, SAN switches, and HBAs.

Brocade has a two-pronged strategy: Arm the likes of HP and IBM with OEM’d products and provide a competitive vision of the next generation data center within Brocade One.  This “have your cake and eat it too” strategy is needed to combat Brocade’s largest rivals while shielding them from Cisco.  However, whatever revenue benefits this brings Brocade in the short-term may be overshadowed by an inevitable showdown between Brocade Foundry and HP ProCurve in the long-term.  After all, if you are Brocade you don’t spend $3 billion on Foundry Networks to play third or fourth fiddle and if you are HP you don’t spend $2.7 billion on 3Com to “margin share” with an OEM.

In the end, I’m reminded of a scene in Road House where Dalton says; “I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice.”  And how will you know when not to be nice?  When Mark Hurd says so.

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Brocade One: Real or Take-Over Bait?

June 10, 2010 1 Comment

On June 9, 2010, a special day for me, Brocade officially announced their converged data center strategy with the release of Brocade One. Brocade One has a familiar goal of simplifying the data center architecture while reducing costs.  Brocade plans on leveraging the assets of Foundry Networks (acquired by Brocade in 2008) while creating a “unified view of the data center as a network” (Brahm). 

With this announcement, Brocade is sounding the “all-hands” alarm and pointing the ship directly at both Cisco and Juniper. Cisco’s UCS continues to evolve into a formidable next generation data center architecture backed with new products and software offerings.  Meanwhile, Juniper’s Project Stratus isn’t due to be launched until 2011; fueling Juniper to sign an OEM agreement with Dell for next-generation networking.

No posting about the next-generation data center would be complete without mentioning both HP and IBM.  In May, HP announced that they are a founding member of the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF) along with Juniper, Brocade, Microsoft, and others (http://www.ucif.org).  IBM is notably absent from the UCIF along with Cisco; a coincidence or a sign of things to come?

Finally, while Brocade’s announcement is “interesting”, will anyone notice?  Brocade’s messaging isn’t as refined as their larger competitors and they are arguing that their competitors are putting intelligence in the server while they are putting it into the network.  <Insert Qualification Argument Here> One lingering question; Is Brocade serious about going at it alone or are they making themselves a more attractive take-over target?

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2010: The War of IT has Begun; Cisco delivers blow to HP

February 19, 2010 Leave a comment

In school, we are taught important dates or periods within history.  I’ll never forget a history professor asking, “who fired the first shot?” in the American Revolution or detailing the sinking of the Lusitania by the Germans.   Within the history of high technology, yesterday’s announcement by Keith Goodwin, Vice President Cisco’s Worldwide Partner Organization, is such a date.  With one statement, Cisco changed the IT landscape as they ended a lucrative and important relationship with HP by failing to renew HP’s System Integrator Contract that strips HP of being a Cisco Certified Partner and Reseller.

Effectively, HP is now on the outside looking-in at Cisco’s Empire.  HP loses access to Cisco’s proprietary information including product roadmaps and reseller initiatives.  Additionally, Cisco no longer offers HP “protection” as they begin to untangle their complicated business relationships including software and hardware sales.  While HP may believe they are prepared for this action, competing against Cisco head-to-head is very different from maintaining a competition/cooperation arrangement; yet HP is very different from past competitors.

With HP’s size and market power, are we poised to answer the question, “What would happen if an unstoppable force strikes an immoveable object?”  HP has amassed a powerful software and hardware portfolio via acquisition and partnerships.  Also, HP has something Cisco needs, a large, growing, and competent services division (EDS).

Of course, Cisco counter’s EDS with their relationship with IBM but how long will that last?  After-all, IBM is in a similar position as HP with one intriguing difference; IBM is not a network equipment manufacturer (yet).  Can Chambers convince Palmisano to maintain the status quo?  Or do they look beyond partnerships to acquire Juniper, Brocade, or perhaps ZTE to fill their product holes.  Would Palmisano stand for Cisco acquiring a services company?  Or, would that be the final straw that opens a new flank in the war against Cisco.  What would happen if Cisco purchased Liquid Computing or the new SGI?

Finally, let’s not forget Larry Ellison and Michael Dell.  Oracle didn’t just spend billions of dollars on SUN to sit on the sidelines.  Oracle now sports an impressive list of hardware and software assets especially in the realms of file systems and virtualization.  Meanwhile, Dell has opened up their pocketbook and has entered into the services business while radically expanding their relationship with Juniper.

Look for three things to happen:

  1. Heightened M&A Activity (large and small)
  2. Heightened Partnership Activity and Alliances
  3. The rise of an unexpected and/or new competitor

We are watching history in the making as its; Chambers vs. Hurd vs. Palmisano vs. Ellison vs. Dell vs. Klayko vs. Jonhson vs. ?

2010: The War of IT

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For the Datacenter, Forget E=MC^2, Sav= (MC^4+AV) Sec

January 25, 2010 Leave a comment

Why do we need Cisco UCS, HP Adaptive Infrastructure, IBM Stratus, Liquid Computing, and more? 

Savings equals…

Management
Management is a critical component of any datacenter.  A datacenter may be defined as a symphony of hardware and software spanning multiple disciplines that is expected to be “always-on” and never to fail.  If you couple this with advances in virtualization, the “green movement”, and the need to understand a complete Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of datacenter operations, then management is the only answer.  Management is not intended to replace the human element, rather to augment it through automation that allows human beings to tame an ever complex environment.

Examples of this renewed interest in management are plentiful; HP buys Opsware and Mercury Interactive, BMC buys BladeLogic, Cisco partners with BMC, Cisco UCS Manager, EMC buys Configuresoft, Voyence, SMARTS, and Infra, and more.

Current
Current, also known as power, usage within the datacenter continues to increase at a staggering rate.  In fact, the price for said current may actually outpace both the IT equipment and the facility itself.  It’s not simply servers, but routers, switches, wan acceleration devices, security devices, sans, nas, lights, laptops, monitors, and more that cause the bills to continually increase.  Couple this with the additional demands of cooling and redundancy and you have a real crisis on your hands.

An example of changes in the industry may be seen in ActivePower’s efforts in the areas of power and environmentally friendly “green” solutions.  Additionally, we might have been given a glimpse to one answer to this problem, as Google has made a $10 million investment in eSolar; inventors of Utility-Scale Solar Power.

Cabling
Cabling is an essential ingredient to any datacenter design and one that has the potential to provide significant cost savings in the next generation datacenter.  It started with the blade server revolution including embedded switches, and may very well end with Cisco’s UCS, HP’s Adaptive Infrastructure, or IBM’s Stratus datacenter initiatives. 

Illustrating this point, Cisco has published a case study with Saint Joseph Health System (SJHS) in which the hospital claimed an 85% savings in cabling costs by using the Cisco Nexus equipment.

Cooling
Current generates heat, heat requires cooling, cooling requires current, and around-and-around we go.  In the old days, you simply purchased the appropriate amount of cooling to keep your datacenter at a cool and constant temperature.  Today, upwards of 40% of your datacenter energy bill is from cooling.  Additionally, we have “green” concerns and use PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) and DCE (Data Center Efficiencies) metrics to calculate how well we are doing and compare datacenters against others.  Incidentally, chillers, humidifiers, and CRAC’s (Computer Room Air Conditioning) contribute handsomely to these calculations.

A concept called adaptive cooling is a promising technology to solve the cooling challenge.  The premise is today’s equipment manufactures build systems that are more reliable and are designed to “handle the heat.”  Sensors are used to form baselines and models that are used to optimize modern cooling techniques.  Yahoo improved cooling and energy savings of 31% by partnering with SynapSense.

Capacity
Once thought to be endless, datacenters are rapidly running out of capacity.  By capacity, I am referring to everything from floor space to power and cooling to facilities themselves.  This has lead to the innovation of a “datacenter in a box” which is offered by the likes of Sun, Rackable, HP, IBM, and more.  These containers allow datacenters to expand rapidly while offering innovative power and cooling options.  However, space alone won’t solve the capacity issue.  Therefore, the efforts by Cisco, IBM, HP, and others to create a new datacenter fabric that combines massively dense servers, storage, networking, security, and virtualization are so important.

Look no further than Facebook who has started construction on a custom datacenter with over 140,000 square foot capacity at a cost of $188 million.  Note that they are touting the efficiency of this new datacenter including the potential of power and cooling cost savings.

Agility
As Ronald Reagan famously said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” so too can we proclaim the tearing down of the walls between the silos within the datacenter.  We no longer can allow storage, networking, servers, security, applications, facilities, and more to operate independently of each other.  By operating as a unified team, the datacenter becomes more agile, proactive, efficient, and better equipped to handle all challenges. 

Examples of this movement is detected within software vendors (BMC, HP) unifying the management of these disciplines and hardware (Cisco, Juniper, Brocade) vendors integrating the functions into a single chassis.

Virtualization
No equation of savings within the datacenter would be complete without discussing virtualization.  While the ideas of virtualization have been around for years, it’s the application of this technology that has changed the industry forever.  Advances in network, server, application, and storage virtualization impact cost savings across the equation.

Examples include VMware vSphere, Citrix XenServer, Sun xVM, Cisco UCS (Nexus 1000v), Arcadia (Cisco/EMC JV)

Security
Security has and will continue to be a major concern within the datacenter.  The number of attacks and sophistication of these attacks continues to rise.  With the advent of Cloud Computing or shared services running on a common platform, the potential risks of a security breach are enormous.  Additionally, security must span all the disciplines within the data center while taking into account user access/privileges, data (in-motion and at-rest), and more.  Finally, security must continue to evolve while adhering to compliance and regulatory pressures.

Recent activities in this area include Cisco acquiring Rohati, SAIC purchasing CloudShield, the growth of Tufin and AlgoSec, and next generation firewall providers such as Palo Alto Networks.

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2009: We Fooled You

December 31, 2009 1 Comment

As 2009 comes to a close, below is my very incomplete list of top “we fooled you” moments of 2009.

  • Cloud Computing trumps everything
  • Virtualization renders the OS irrelevant
  • Google “does no evil”
  • Cisco can’t grow or compete
  • Outsourcing isn’t forever
  • Chrome is better than Firefox or IE
  • Storm / Android beats the iPhone
  • Bobby (Foundry) would never sell
  • Huawei will falter
  • HP can’t catch IBM
  • IBM wouldn’t get back into networking equipment
  • Sun is dead
  • Open Source Software kills ISVs
  • Open Source Hardware dominates storage
  • Free Software – LOL
  • PBT vs. MPLS
  • Nortel would be saved
  • Web vs. traditional advertising
  • Juniper would never enter switching
  • Oracle is just a database company
  • Apple vs. Microsoft
  • Dell doesn’t care about services
  • IPOs are dead
  • Facebook is a fad
  • LTE is years away
  • Cisco UCS crushes HP, IBM, Dell, and more.
  • Business Intelligence wars would end
  • IPv6 – enough said
  • All start-ups need traditional VCs
  • Internet / IP Security is solid
  • Google Apps ends the need for Microsoft Office
  • Yahoo is dead
  • Linux Desktop vs. Apple and Microsoft

2009 was both an exciting and frustrating year for technology.  The battle lines are drawn for 2010 and I’m looking forward to a great and surprising year.

Happy New Year!

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Cisco Lays Their Trap

December 10, 2009 Leave a comment

I must admit that I had a good chuckle when I read the reports of Cisco’s financial analyst conference on Tuesday.  After all these years at the helm, it’s amazing to watch Chambers discuss subjects ranging from Flip to Cisco’s projected long-term growth rate.  However, it is clear to me that Chambers’ relishes dominating the next chapter in communications.

Cisco understands that fighting a two flank war against powerful advisories like HP and IBM is fraught with danger, could lead to slower adoption of their vision, and may yield lower than projected growth rates.  So what’s a company to do?  Divide and Conquer.  How?  You lay the trap.  HP had their chance and chose to go in a different direction; lost cause.  IBM had their chance and turned Cisco down but maybe they should reconsider; Venus Flytrap,

Lost Cause:  HP is determined and ready to take on Cisco head-to-head.  They have spent billions of dollars creating a software and services powerhouse while quietly making inroads within enterprise networking.  Additionally, HP has consumer brand recognition and acceptance which Cisco craves.  Finally, HP has Michael Hurd; a driven CEO who is ready and willing to lead this industry.  There is little Cisco can do here to sway HP’s momentum and vision.  Therefore, the best Cisco can hope for is to continue collecting purchase orders from the HP channel.

Venus Flytrap:  IBM has almost everything they need to take on Cisco but they have taken a more cautious approach than HP.  After-all, IBM has dominant research and development capabilities and are the fathers of autonomic computing.  IBM has always concentrated on high margin / high value products while tying everything together with their vaunted services division.  Perhaps IBM is in a quandary; while services, storage, virtualization, software, servers, mainframes, etc yield high margins, enterprise networking computing has become commoditized while datacenter networking equipment remains a question mark.  Cisco aims to help IBM with their quandary by offering a truce of sorts; work with us and we won’t go into storage or services! 

If you believe that, then I have some Ocean Front Property in Arizona to sell you.  Cisco has already chosen sides on the storage and virtualization fronts by aligning themselves with EMC and VMware.  A combination of Cisco and EMC would give them a foothold within those areas as well as security and management software; all of which would threaten IBM. 

Also, Chambers claims Cisco won’t be going the route of HP’s acquisition of EDS to buy their way into services.  In the short term this is a great strategy, in the long term they are going to buy someone like CSC, ACS, Unisys, or even McKesson (I’ll leave that to a future post).  Again, Cisco offered IBM an olive-branch of sorts in exchange for a tighter partnership that Cisco craved in beginning.

The million dollar question is; what will IBM do?  Does IBM continue to throw jabs at Cisco through their partnerships while Cisco throws power punches?  Does IBM acquire Juniper or Brocade to battle Cisco and HP?  Or, does IBM take a wait-and-see approach?

Personally, I’d like to know what the heck is going on at Dell and Oracle.  I’ll give Oracle a bit of a break as they battle the EU for control of Sun but Dell has got to wake up and fast.  They have a chance to crash this party by innovating and commoditizing the industry faster than everyone else can recoup their costs.  This sounds like when Michael Dell revolutionized the PC industry by introducing direct purchasing and just-in-time assembling. 

For now, Cisco has laid the trap and they await the fruits of their labor.  Once again, Chambers continues to impress as this is better than any reality TV series; brilliant.

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