Question: How do you invade corporate data centers? Answer: You get really cozy, really quickly with data center software companies like VMware and Oracle. That’s part of the strategy unfolding at Cisco Systems Inc., which will have a major presence at the VMworld and Oracle OpenWorld conferences in San Francisco. Here’s the analysis.

Let’s start with some background: Cisco Systems’ Unified Computing System strategy converges storage, networking and servers in the data center. At first glance, UCS is off to a strong start. Just last week, Tech Data CEO Bob Dutkowsky told The VAR Guy that demand for Cisco’s server solutions appeared strong. Moreover, Cisco has been building closer relationships with folks like VMware and EMC.

Still, Cisco CEO John Chambers delivered a cautious tone during a mid-August 2010 earnings call with analysts. Chambers is upbeat about Cisco’s product lineup but he remains concerned about mixed signals from the economy and customers.

A Surprise At Oracle OpenWorld?

Instead of bowing to the economy, Cisco is going on the offensive and will have a major presence at both VMworld (Aug. 30 – Sept. 2, San Francisco) and Oracle OpenWorld (Sept. 19-23, San Francisco).

In fact, The VAR Guy is hearing rumors that Cisco and Oracle may potentially announce some enhanced business strategies at OpenWorld. Hmmm… Could the rumored effort involve Cisco UCS leveraging Oracle VM virtualization? That’s a definite maybe. Regardless, the Cisco-Oracle relationship requires a delicate balancing act, especially as Cisco’s server and storage business potentially competes with Oracle’s Sun businesses.

Lots of VMworld Noise

Meanwhile, Cisco is set to invade VMworld, where the networking company will talk about its cloud-enabled technology, updates to the Nexus 1000V, new services, and of course, the Cisco UCS alignment with VMware’s Cloud Service director.

Cisco will seemingly be everywhere at VMworld, with Cisco executives scheduled to speak in at least six separate sessions.

The networking king, it seems, wants to become the data center king. And Cisco’s best chance for success, The VAR Guy believes, requires closer working relationships with major software companies like Oracle and VMware.

Additional reporting from David Courbanou. Sign up for The VAR Guy’s Newsletter; Webcasts and Resource Center; and via RSS; Facebook; Identi.ca; Twitter and VARtweet.

Read More About This Topic

• Red Hat vs. VMware: Is the Data Center War Real?
• Cisco, HP Examine Rival Partner Conference Agendas
• Cisco Hedging Virtualization Bets?
• Cisco Live: Forrester Research Hails “Jane” Chambers
• New FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator For VMware View

Game On!

Cisco, NetApp, and VMware have teamed up to deliver next-generation dynamic data centers today. This includes the industry’s first end-to-end secure multi-tenancy solution that helps transform IT silos into shared infrastructure.

Written by Alex Williams / January 25, 2010 5:00 PM / 0 Comments

« Prior Post

This post is part of our ReadWriteCloud channel, which is dedicated to covering virtualization and cloud computing. The channel is sponsored by Intel and VMware. As you're planning your Cloud Architecture, check out this helpful resource from our sponsors: Virtualized Datacenter = Real-World IT Optimization.

Driving the enterprise this year is a quest for efficiency and flexibility. To determine the actual direction, one needs quantifiable information that proves certain trends have merit.

The want ads are a great resource for seeing what types of investments are being made by companies. This year, people with virtualization skills are in big demand, followed by -you guessed it - cloud computing.

Forrester Research is predicting that IT spending will jump about 8% but hiring will lag.

According to a post on CIO.com, Wedbush Securities, a Wall Street analyst firm, sees projects involving virtualization, Windows 7 and enterprise software as high on the corporate priority list.

In 2008, Dice.com ran an average of 85,000 job listings. Then Lehman Bros. collapsed and the job market fizzled. Jobs posted took a drop in 2009, falling to a low of 47,000. Today, the count is up to 50,000 and is expected to increase over the span of the year.

The fastest growing skills are for virtualization, which is at about 2,000 ads, up 21% compared to last year. Cloud computing is showing popularity, too. Last year there were zero jobs posted.This year there are more than 300.

Large companies from a number of industries are hiring virtualization pros, showing the demand is not just from technology companies.

IT managers realize that virtualization pros can manage more servers than their counterparts. For example, CIO.com cites a study that found one administrator manages 65 physical servers. The average for virtual servers is 77.

That's not a huge increase but it can help save IT dollars that can be used to prove whether other growing trends deserve attention.

Wow - Check out that growth rate! Hot Jobs: Virtualization Pros are in Big Demand

« EMC To Acquire Archer | Main

January 05, 2010

The Continuing Consumerization Of Enterprise IT

Today's plethora of EMC Iomega announcements at CES made me reflect on yet another subtle yet profound influence on the entire enterprise IT space -- the impact of consumer technology.

My wife (the psychology major!) tells me that we're hardwired to react to sudden shifts in our environment; we're not so adapted to recognizing and reacting to subtle shifts over longer periods.

And if you're in the enterprise IT game, you may not be noticing just how much consumerization is changing how we think about enterprise IT.

Consumerization Makes Everyone An IT Expert -- Sort Of

We all know how our personal technology works -- our desktops and notebooks, our favorite applications and web sites, our high-speed internet, our smartphones.  Many of us have access to powerful tools at home, and we know how they work.

Indeed, it's not unusual to have better tech at home than in the office these days ...

When we come into the workplace, we expect at least the same experience, or better.  We expect our stuff to work, to be easy to use, to do what we want it to do.  We don't need IT experts at home; we shouldn't really need them in the workplace, either.

As an example, what's the better way to sell virtual desktops to the business?  Telling them they'll save money, or knowledge workers can use any device they choose, and their experience will follow them around? 

Hint: the latter pitch tends to work better :-)

What's the impact?  We, as IT professionals, need to drop the old-school perception that many of our users are complete technology morons, and start to assume that our employees are actually quite adept at using technology to get their jobs done.

Several years ago when we rolled out our internal social media platform (EMC|One), we didn't really provide any training.  After all, you don't need training to use Google, Facebook, Twitter, et. al.  It worked out pretty well.

More importantly, our enterprise users now expect enterprise IT to be as easy to use as any consumer application.  Gone are people willing to accept complicated UIs and obtuse menu structures, not to mention applications that are sluggish or throw errors.

The consumerization of IT has made all of our users far more demanding, hasn't it?

Many Enterprise IT Concepts Can Work At A Consumer Level

There are lots of examples, but let me just point at a few recent examples from the EMC Iomega portfolio:

* a decent multi-protocol 8TB RAID array for $1899

* a decent storage virtualization device for $99

* a workable desktop virtualization solution for basically "free"

* a multimedia content server for $249

* and, my personal favorite, a 1TB storage device for $97, with free delivery and a 3 year warranty

Just a few years ago, each of these devices would only have been found in sophisticated IT environments being run by sophisticated IT people.  Now they're just something you click and buy with not too much thought.

The Iomega Rationale

Like many of EMC's acquisitions, many people thought us a bit crazy when we laid out a bunch of money for Iomega, which was basically known for Zip drives.  I mean, who would want to get into a low-margin consumer market?

Yep, we were crazy, alright.  But now, I think people are starting to see a bit of sanity in our thinking.

First, the world's most efficient technology supply chain, distribution and support can be found in consumer electronics.  The consumer stuff is far cheaper to build, sell and support than traditional enterprise IT.  A lot cheaper.  And anything we can learn from their business and apply to EMC's more traditional IT business is a win for our customers.

Second, concepts that work well at a small scale can sometimes work well at a larger scale.  I can't go into too many details, but bits and pieces of Iomega technology are finding their way into other EMC products.

Third, concepts that work well at a large scale can sometimes work well at a smaller scale -- as evidenced by the examples I gave above.

The New Thinking

At one time in our industry, it was easy to point to one technology solution and say "well, that's just for consumers" and then point at another and say "well, that's just for enterprises".

Those distinctions aren't really all that useful any more.

As consumerization of IT continues, the lines will continue to blur, and trying to categorize products, companies or technologies as one or another won't make much sense.

Because, after all, aren't enterprises are nothing more than a bunch of consumers who come to work every day?

Posted at 05:21 PM in Big Ideas (hopefully ...), EMC Viewpoint, Technology Debates, Wide World of Vendors | Permalink

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