Enterasys Joins the Datacenter Fight; Bringing a Knife to a Gun Fight

Enterasys joins the growing list of network equipment vendors unveiling their vaunted datacenter strategy with the hopes of derailing their larger competitor’s plans.  Enterasys’ hope hinges on a “vendor agnostic” datacenter strategy and is based on their S-series switches with their policy-based operations model.  By supporting multiple virtualization and storage vendors, Enterasys is banking the farm on best-of-breed architectures and emerging IEEE standards.

While Enterasys’ strategy looks good on a press release, it may have been their only option.  Faced with the reality that Dell has decided to team with Juniper Networks, IBM is remaining “neutral” (for now), HP does not need another switch, Brocade purchased Foundry Networks, and Cisco is Cisco, there is little room for Enterasys to partner with a major U.S. manufacturer.  However, would an International partnership make sense?  Aren’t they stronger outside of North America?

Additionally, does Enterasys really believe that Cisco, HP, and Brocade will not support 3^rd party vendor solutions?  The last time I looked, Cisco’s MDS supports EMC, HDS, IBM, HP, NetApp, and more.  Cisco’s UCS-B supports multiple hypervisors including offerings from both VMware and Microsoft. Finally, do you remember Cisco’s Open Partner Ecosystem that “helps stimulate technology innovation, augment service delivery, and accelerate market adoption of Unified Computing”?  The same could be said, in varying degrees, about HP and Brocade.  Therefore, what is new or different about Enterasys’ solution?

Perhaps, Enterasys’ will attempt to differentiate their virtualization support via their superior policy-based security and templates.  However, isn’t that simply a different way to do virtual machine profile mapping ala Cisco and Brocade?  Don’t get me wrong; Enterasys has some very interesting and innovative technology but their lack of market power and limited product portfolio puts them at risk of getting lost in the shuffle.

In the end, Enterasys faces an uphill battle against their larger and higher profile competitors.  The war for the next generation datacenter is in full swing and Cisco and HP are proving plenty of “shock and awe” while Juniper, Brocade, Dell, and IBM have their guns locked and loaded.

In the future, Enterasys’ relationship with Siemens Enterprise Communications may yield additional firepower.  However, right now Enterasys is bringing a knife to a gunfight.