5 Reasons Cisco's Blade Server Push A 'Game-Changer'

Unified Computing System networking blade server virtualization

Naysayers want to see UCS fail, claiming San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco has no place in the server market and should leave the data center to the incumbents, like Hewlett-Packard and IBM. But Cisco, never one to kowtow to the competition and back out of a potentially lucrative market, is staying put, promising a cutting-edge architecture that ties together the network, servers, storage and virtualization, all choreographed through a single management console.

"We believe the network is at the heart of tying this together," Cisco CEO John Chambers said. "We're looking at this market in terms of bringing virtualization to life, unleashing the power of virtualization."

Chambers later added: "Is this an industry-changing event? You betcha."

Potential customers and partners are still digesting UCS, which likely won't be available for a couple of months. In the meantime, here are 5 reasons why the Unified Computing System changes the data center game for good.

1. Customers love choice.
Cisco's blade server gives both customers and channel partners a fresh alternative in the data center. If solution providers are fed up with HP, Dell, IBM and other server players, Cisco is bringing something new to the table. And the $40 billion company brings with it a fair amount of marketing clout. With its legacy of cracking new markets and gobbling up market share, Cisco and its partners are ready to chase a new opportunity. "They'll be another major name in the field," said Dave Dozier, director of sales at Miller Networks, a Morgan Hill, Calif.-based solution provider. "Dell's already there. HP's already there. Having a third big name in there creates more options. Them just getting into the game will be nice. Brand recognition is huge with Cisco."

2. When Cisco bets big, it pays off -- for everyone.
A lot of comparisons have been made between UCS -- which brings together networking, virtualization and blade servers -- and Cisco's first entrance into the VoIP market years ago. It'll be a similar transition for partners as they get up to speed on new technologies and business operations. Just a few years after entering the market, Cisco is now the clear leader in the VoIP space, where all of the marketing dollars it spent help grow awareness and acceptance of the market as a whole. Look for it to have comparable success in the data center, where Cisco estimated that UCS would enable itself and its partners to capture a roughly $20 billion piece of the lucrative data center pie. "This is similar to what happened when Cisco got into VoIP," said Zeus Kerravala, senior vice president of analyst firm Yankee Group. "It creates a huge opportunity for the partners, but partners will need to learn new skills in new areas. Virtualization and data center automation, which UCS enables, will have an impact on how applications perform. Partners will need to understand how the server and network interact with one another to create true workload mobility."

3. Cisco's UCS is not just a server play, but a full architecture.
Cisco is taking data center virtualization to a new level with UCS, which comprises blade servers, Ethernet switches and a single management console to tie together the "the compute power, the storage access and the networking capabilities" of the next-generation data center to facilitate Cisco's vision of accessing information from any device, any network and any location at any time, Chambers said. Instead of releasing a box-based point product, Cisco is taking a full-fledged architecture approach, offering a "wire once" solution set that leverages capabilities that once required stringing together several disparate pieces of equipment. Taking an architectural approach, Cisco said UCS can save companies about 20 percent on capital expenditures and cut the complexity in the data center by about 30 percent. Cisco also promises to boost energy efficiency, lower cooling and power costs and boost the amount of memory required when supporting up to 320 servers and thousands of virtual machines. Cisco said UCS can also enable a higher degree of virtualization utilization, which is typically around 30 percent. VMware CEO Paul Maritz said UCS will "get people off the dime and accelerate the trend to large-scale virtualization. There will no longer be any reason you can't take any load in the data center or in the cloud and give it the benefit of virtualization."

4. Cisco will work diligently to get partners up to speed.
Cisco is building an Authorized Technology Partner channel program and is planning to launch a pair of new individual technical certifications around mid-2009. The data center architect and data center engineer certifications will require partners to have experience in both the networking and storage sides. On the sales side, Cisco will add new training for account managers that will include UCS. It will be layered across the existing Data Center Network Infrastructure and Data Center Storage Networking specializations. While Cisco plans to start small, rolling UCS out to just a small segment of data-center-specialized partners, roughly 30 to 50, it will reach a broader scale in the very near future, ultimately letting in partners who may not currently have server or virtualization practices, but have the networking know-how to bring UCS to market with a bang and attack the data center, with UCS as the inroad. " this provides us an opportunity to build our networking expertise into new accounts where we haven't been able to do servers. It's going to allow us into some new markets and accounts," said Bob Olwig, vice president of corporate business development for St. Louis-based solution provider World Wide Technology Inc.

5. Cisco isn't going it alone.
Cisco is billing its UCS strategy as an ecosystem of world-class technology partners. Cisco has called upon several technology leaders to contribute to the UCS architecture. Big Boys like BMC, EMC, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat, VMware and a host of others have given UCS a solid handshake and have promised to run their software and applications on UCS. Getting the stamp of approval from best-of-breed players bodes well for Cisco, illustrating that its UCS architecture will play nicely with others. It has also left the door open to work with incumbents like HP and IBM.