Cisco Data Center CTO Talks Plans For Invicta, Where Storage Partners Fit In

Cisco's Storage Story

In January, Cisco quietly unveiled its UCS Invicta Solid-State System, a new version of its Unified Computing System converged infrastructure that leverages the Invicta flash memory technology Cisco gained through its Whiptail acquisition last year.

Paul Perez, vice president and chief technology officer of Cisco's Data Center business, spoke with CRN recently about how Invicta changes UCS and why the technology, despite the belief of some in the industry, isn't straining Cisco's partnerships with storage vendors such as NetApp and EMC.

Here's what Perez had to say.

Why Are You Using Whiptail [Now Invicta] Technology In UCS?

With UCS we are not necessarily in the server business, although we are measured in the market by server market share. How we view the business internally and how I personally view it is that we are in the computing business. And the difference between those two is that in computing, you are in the business of optimizing application environments for performance and for total cost of ownership.

… So, from that angle, when we announced the Whiptail acquisition, which is now UCS Invicta, what we saw is that within that computing environment, the role of computing is really performance and within that performance there is a certain sort of requirement for resiliency and reliability. When you think about the role of storage, it's really primarily about data availability and data protection. It's all about reliability and availability of data and there are performance requirements for it.

So what we were doing is evolving UCS from what we would call our first-generation architecture, which really focused on virtualization and private clouds, into our next-generation architecture, which has to also comprehend examples of data-intensive computational environments, where the working size of the data sets are getting much larger and the computations, as a result, was getting a longer, in spite of things like real-time analytics.

Were There Talks With EMC And NetApp About Your Plans For Invicta?

We were in deep conversations -- very, very deep conversations -- with all of our storage partners right after that acquisition. Those conversations went on for months, and those conversations were very open and very transparent about everything we were intending to do. So they knew when we would start shipping systems, they knew the topology and the offerings we were going to provide; and we therefore had discussions on what is the approach to our partnerships and the converged systems and integrated systems that we are working on together.

So What Role Do EMC And NetApp Now Play In UCS Moving Forward?

If we had anyone from NetApp or EMC or VCE on the call, they would probably make a statement that data has life cycles. And what we are focused on is the active working set of data. We have customers, and again it's that active working set, that hot data set that is getting bigger and it's living longer, when you think about a lot of the analytics environments that are sprouting out.

So we are addressing that environment, but ultimately, we see all that sitting on a top of a longer-term data protection environment that is not in Cisco's portfolio. So we will continue our partnerships with our existing storage partners for as long as they want them.

Of The 50 Customers Using UCS Invicta Today, Are Any Using Invicta As Primary Storage?

Invicta is rarely, if at all, being used primarily as storage. Currently, most customers are bringing in flash to complement existing storage and accelerate specific apps. Very few customers are ready to migrate to an all-flash environment today, as it simply isn't practical.

Do You Think Cisco Sales Reps Are Pushing UCS Invicta Over Vblocks?

That is not our go-to-market plan. So I can refute the fact that that is our intent. I cannot speak for a multithousand-person sales force, especially for events that transpired when that sales force was in the process of being trained. You can imagine that sales guys and gals tend to be aggressive. So I feel confident that by now we have a trained sales force that is educated on the value proposition, the strategic intent and the rules of engagement.

How Are Those Rules Of Engagement Enforced?

The difference between the planning that happens in the boardroom and the reality of what happens in the street, there is always execution noise that happens there, because at the end of the day, you are relying on people.

So how we try to dampen that noise is through consistent and frequent messaging that happens all the way from me ... but even more importantly from leaders like Chuck Robbins, who is our worldwide sales lead and who spells out for everyone in our sales force what we are trying to do, why we are doing it that way, the value of our partnerships and the rules of engagement.

In the past few months, the products were available and we were in the process of doing sales training. So some of those instances probably happened in the middle of that training being rolled out. So that would be one scenario.

Do Cisco Reps Get More Money For Selling UCS Invicta Than They Do Vblock Or FlexPod?

The compensation has not changed. Invicta is part of the UCS product structure. We have not decentivized our sales force from continuing to hunt for FlexPod and for Vblock deals. That compensation remains constant from what it was a year ago.

Does Cisco Lead With UCS Invicta In Greenfield Opportunities?

If a customer has a NetApp or an EMC environment, we respect that customer choice. If a customer tells us 'Hey, you know what, I've had EMC in the past, so for integrated infrastructure I'd rather go with Vblock or FlexPod,' we respect that choice. But will we lead with UCS and Invicta in greenfield or virgin opportunities? Absolutely.

But, keep in mind, when you look at the richness of [EMC and NetApp] storage capabilities, Invicta has a slice of those capabilities, because what we care about is performance with the right level of resiliency and protection as opposed to the ultimate in disaster recovery, data protection, [etc.]

What's Your Message To Cisco Partners Selling Invicta?

I think that they have to pay attention to the value proposition for each of those [converged infrastructure] offerings. Because for example, the VCE value proposition extends beyond just the technology. It’s a capability that arrives ready to roll and they have unified support for an infrastructure that is composed from multiple vendors. So they provide a level of abstraction and almost of operational virtualization, for lack of a better term, that other people don’t provide.

I think that with FlexPod, FlexPod is a very simple and powerful infrastructure that is very general purpose and is versatile. Ultimately, it all depends on understanding the customer needs.

UCS Invicta Launched To Little Fanfare. Why?

This year Cisco chose to highlight things like InterCloud and our new capabilities in cloud in our public venues like Cisco Live in Milan in January. So we decided, hey, we are just going to just go to the market, start selling the product, build some successes and maybe the public messaging around Invicta will be the success we have accumulated, not necessarily what we are about to do. So it was a balancing act.

How Does UCS Invicta Compare To Converged Systems From HP Or Dell?

What Dell and HP to a large degree are doing is simply taking their existing storage infrastructure, for example in the case of HP it might be 3Par and in the case of Dell it might be Compellent, and they are putting solid state drives in them.

Compellent and 3Par have a storage background. ... 3Par had autonomic tiering and Compellent had their fluid architecture. But, at the end of the day, it's not something that’s built from the ground up to maximize solid-state performance. And, in the case of those types of traditional arrays, what ends up happening is that it's easy to accelerate reads or read performance with flash, but it’s a lot harder to accelerate write performance with flash. And that’s one of the key things that’s UCS Invicta solves.

How Do You Feel About Getting UCS With Invicta Into The Market?

After being in the industry 30 years, and this is a very personal note, I looked at how much longer do I have in the industry? It could be 10 years, it could be 12 years, and I made a decision that what I was going to do was to try to make history and to innovate. In the beginning of the interview I told you that acquisitions are an expression of strategy. The business traction that we are seeing with Invicta in the market is a validation of that strategy. So, from that angle, I feel tickled pink. Being able to influence Cisco to move in a new direction and seeing the customers validate that that direction is the right one, is very rewarding.