Cisco Systems is preparing to enter the server market as early as March, according to an article in the New York Times. The article, which claims to have inside sources, said Cisco aims to sell a server combining hardware and virtualization software from Cisco and VMWare Inc.
Speculation on Cisco’s move into the server market has been going on for several months. Many experts agree that this is a logical extension for a company that has a dominate market share in other network products like switches and routers. One interesting thing to watch is how long time allies like HP and IBM will feel about Cisco competing with them in the server market.
Virtualization technology offer business tremendous benefits and a networking company like Cisco see an opportunity to produce a new, potentially disruptive class of hardware and software management systems that span an entire data center. With businesses looking to manage their data centers as a single entity rather than separate units, Cisco’s entrance in the server market could make them the core supplier of data center technologies (Cisco has a minority stake in VMWare – the leading supplier of virtualization software.
Cisco’s newfound aspirations stretch well beyond the $50 billion server market to include management software and possibly even storage. “Our vision is, how do we virtualized the entire data center?” Ms. Warrior said. “It is not about a single product. We will have a series of products that enable us to make that transition.”
To read the entire NY Times article click here. Check back in a few weeks as this will be an interesting development in the server virtualization market and something we’ll want to keep an eye on.
Posted under Data Center Virtualization, Server Virtualization, Virtualization News, Virtualization Products / Reviews
This post was written by admin on January 20, 2009
