Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Forecast: Cloudy

Which environments would find UCS most appealing, and which would be interested in switching from existing solutions to the new architecture? Mark Bowker, an analyst with Milford, Mass.-based Enterprise Strategy Group, suggests the "architecture would be especially appealing to high-end data centers [that] see benefits in cloud computing and have the requirement for it."

Cloud computing is making the rounds in IT today as one of the hottest computing paradigms in which tasks are assigned to a combination of connections, services and software that are accessed over a network. This network of servers and connections is collectively known as "the cloud." Leveraging the scale of the cloud allows users to access exceptional processing power through large-scale cluster computing and server virtualization.

Indeed, the required investment, including power draw and footprint as well as acquisition costs, might be prohibitive for midrange organizations. Wolf, on the other hand, believes UCS could be a fit for midsize companies. "I wouldn't rule out the midrange, where the midrange is 50 to 500 servers," he says.

Wolf believes Cisco will fight an uphill battle in the competitive blade server market. "With solutions like OpenView [from] HP, you need a compelling reason to change," he says. In part, that's because high-end data centers may be hesitant to manage a greater mix of server platforms than they already do. Additionally, major new products frequently have a long proof-of-concept period, and the recession has placed even greater limits on IT budgets and personnel.

Because Cisco is new to the server world, potential customers would have to be convinced that Cisco's commitment to its new architecture is a lasting one, says Greg Schulz, principal analyst and infrastructure consultant at The StorageIO Group. "Even enterprise data centers willing to switch will be making a major time and resource commitment just to evaluate, let alone deploy [it]. UCS must be available for the long haul," he explains.

Schulz suggests that Cisco has developed UCS not as a head-to-head competitor for former partners Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. and Dell Inc., but as an integrated platform that offers all data center building blocks in a unified form factor.

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