Unified Computing System

Cisco launches blade switch just weeks after HP ProCurve

Two weeks ago HP ProCurve launched a new line of blade switches, the 6120XG and the 6120G/XG, which plug into the same blade enclosures as HP’s BladeSystem servers. These switches were meant to replace the switches which HP OEMs from a third party, most likely Blade Network Technologies’ BNT switches.

Now Cisco has launched the Nexus 4000, a blade switch which also fits inside a blade server enclosure. Like other switches in the Nexus family, the Nexus 4000 runs the NX-OS operating system, which Cisco designed for converging LANs and storage-area networks (SANs). The switch is also designed to support converged, data center Ethernet, the pre-standard technology that will allow data centers to run server and storage traffic across the same wire.

Although the Nexus 4000 is part of Cisco’s Nexus switch family, Cisco is only selling it through OEM channels, specifically blade server vendors. These are the same server vendors that Cisco now competes against with its Unified Computing System, a line of data center technologies which includes blade servers.  It remains to be seen how enthusiastic vendors like IBM and Dell will be about selling a switch from a server competitor with their blade server systems.  I doubt HP will be interested, given that it just launched a similar product.

Brocade continues to exploit friction between Cisco and systems vendors

It’s debatable just how much Cisco’s move into the server market with its launch of the Unified Computing System (UCS) has truly soured the networking giant’s strategic alliances with IBM and Dell, but Brocade has wasted no time in exploiting whatever separation may arise as a result.

Cisco’s UCS strategy banks on the need for tight integration between servers, storage and networks in next-generation data centers, particularly those that use a unified fabric, such as converged Ethernet, to transport all forms of data center traffic on a single medium. Cisco see an opportunity here, believing that many enterprises will want to get all their data center equipment from a single vendor in order to build such a highly-integrated infrastructure.

Of course, as part of its plan to exploit this potential market, Cisco has introduced its own line of servers, putting it into direct competition with long time allies in the data center, such as Dell, HP and IBM.

Whatever rift that forms between Cisco and these server vendors is an opportunity for Cisco’s networking competitors.

In the year since the storage networking company Brocade bought Foundry Networks, it has been leveraging its existing partnerships with leading IT equipment vendors to expand the market for its newly acquired Ethernet switching business. Apparently vendors like IBM and Dell are only too eager to find an alternative networking partner.

Earlier this year IBM announced a major expansion to its OEM relationship with Brocade. Big Blue had been selling IBM-branded storage networking gear from Brocade for several years, but in the new deal it expanded that OEM relationship to include a broad range of former Foundry switches and routers.

And now yesterday Dell announced that it is expanding its own OEM relationship with Brocade, from a storage networking channel to a broad line of Brocade’s Ethernet products.

Dell also announced it would start reselling products from IT automation vendor Scalent Systems. This is all part of an “Efficient Enterprise” offering Dell plans to unload on the market toward the end of 2009. As a result of these new OEM deals, Dell can now offer enterprises servers, storage, networks and IT automation software in one deal, enabling enterprises to buy an integrated data center solution from one vendor. IBM is making a similar move with its OEM agreements and its consulting arm. HP is moving swiftly in this direction, too, but it has the advantage of possessing its own, rapidly growing network equipment division in ProCurve.

How will Cisco’s core businesses fare as it expands?

In the early days of Barack Obama’s presidency, a new meme emerged among the pundits who make their living assembling straw men and tearing them down again on the various cable news networks. Is Obama trying to do too much? Shouldn’t he be focusing on the economy and leave things like health-care reform, etc., to another president?

I found this collective hand-wringing about a president working too hard kind of laughable. So, perhaps I will be guilty of doing the same thing when I ponder here whether Cisco is biting off more than it can chew.

Earlier this year CEO John Chambers made it clear that Cisco plans to move into 30 to 50 new markets over the next year or so. Chambers has preached that smart companies set themselves up in economic downturns to take over market share in new and existing markets when the economy rebounds. There is plenty of truth to that notion, I have no doubt. But I also wonder how much Cisco’s ambitions are driven by stock price.

The heady days of the dotcom boom, when Cisco’s stock price reached past $77, are gone and might as well be forgotten. The tech bubble overvalued even the best companies back then. But in more recent years, Cisco’s stock price has been rather stagnant. It passed $33 a share back in late 2007, but it has been hovering around $18-$23 since then. The best way to put some momentum back in a stock price is to grow revenue and increase profitability. Cisco is well into its campaign to reduce expenses by $1 billion this year. But, as Chambers noted, it is also moving rapidly into new markets, both adjacent and not so adjacent.

Unified Computing, Cisco’s foray into servers, has the potential to make Cisco a lot of money in an adjacent market, but it also puts it in direct competition with old friends like IBM and HP. Some experts have speculated that Cisco’s move to compete with IBM and HP in the server market could hurt it’s bread & butter switching and routing business, since HP and IBM’s consulting divisions have often resold quite a bit of Cisco’s networking gear.

Acquisitions like Pure Digital, maker of the Flip video camera, have pushed Cisco into new, not-so-adjacent markets. The Flip camera is a consumer device, and most analysts will tell you that Cisco has not quite found the recipe for success in the consumer market. Perhaps that’s why Cisco is trying to position the Flip as an enterprise device, talking up the notion that video is the future of enterprise communications and that consumer and enterprise technologies are converging. Cisco went so far as to hand out a free Flip to every channel partner who attended the recent Cisco Partner Summit in Boston.

And this brings me to my central question about Cisco’s future. How will Cisco’s ambitious plans to expand affect its ability to maintain its strong, often dominant, positions in the core markets it sells into? For instance, I am struck by this passage from colleague Michael Morisy’s analysis of Cisco and Juniper’s recent struggles in the WAN optimization market.  When asked why Cisco  and its WAAS product have slipped against competition from Blue Coat, Riverbed and Expand, a Cisco representative had this to say:

“It’s partly due to the fact that the UCS [Unified Computing System] platform was announced [that quarter], and a lot of our sales teams have been focused on that,” said Michael Leonard, a marketing manager with Cisco. “WAAS is sold by the same data center sales teams that sell Nexus and UCS, so that’s part of what we figure it is.”

Leonard said he was optimistic that, with the sales teams seeing the drop in an otherwise fast growing segment, Cisco would continue to remain a strong player in the WAN optimization market.

“That’s something we’re addressing. How that will turn out, I guess we’ll see,” he said. “I expect WAAS to come back. We have a lot of customer demand, and I’m seeing a lot of deals.”

This is an extraordinary statement. Cisco has stumbled in WAN optimization, in part, because sales resources have been focused on selling Nexus (a new line of data center switches that Cisco has positioned as a cousin to, not a replacement of, its venerable Catalyst switches) and the Unified Computing System, a new product line that Cisco announced just a few months ago.  Now Cisco will no doubt tell you that this is just a hiccup, that Cisco has plenty of resources available to tackle all of the markets it competes in today or will compete in tomorrow. But the company is also trimming $1 billion from its operations and laying off a hundreds of employees. Is Cisco stretching itself too thin? Its competitors argue that is the case. But it’s really up to customers and channel partners to make that determination for themselves. They will speak with their wallets.

UPDATE:

I have been informed that in the quotes by Cisco’s Leonard above, he is referring to an overlay sales force that is responsible for kickstarting new Cisco products, not the company’s general enterprise sales organization.