Cisco: Intel Nehalem-based servers part of long-term data center 'vision'

With a sweeping data center initiative that includes Cisco-produced servers, Cisco is still only part way through a just revealed long-term strategy to stand at the center of network-based cloud computing, said John Chambers, CEO of the network equipment company, during a customer and press event today.

Cisco's emerging network-based data center architecture is designed to provide a variety of benefits to customers. "The first challenge is complexity," said Prem Jain, senior VP of engineering, who equated data center operations with "buying a car and assembling it yourself."

Data center center customers of Cisco and its partners will also save money by moving applications to x86 servers, cut energy requirements via Energy Star compliance, and reduce the time spent on network maintenance, provisioning, application migration, and other aspects of planned downtime, according to Jain.

Officials claimed that capital expenditures savings to customers will typically fall in the 20% to 25% bracket, but will sometimes range upward to 50%.

But Cisco's seemingly sudden move from enterprise networking into blade servers, virtualization, network management, and other elements of the initiative didn't just start a couple of months ago during alpha and beta testing, contended Gary Moore, Cisco's senior VP for advanced services, also at the event.

Indeed, Cisco started working with selected partners on its data center strategy about three years ago, according to Chambers.

So far, however, Cisco's star-studded list of partners for the just disclosed plan includes only Intel, software vendors, systems integrators and some 250 channel partners.

With network equipment specialist Cisco now planning its own blade servers based on Intel's Nehalem quad-core architecture, other server OEMs -- including Cisco's long-time ally Hewlett-Packard -- are notably absent from the roster of named partners for Cisco's "long-term vision."

Aside from the obvious factor of competition, another aspect that could be complicating Cisco's partnership relationships around its comprehensive future strategy is the fact that, unlike Cisco, many other server OEMs support processors from both Intel and other chip makers.

During the announcement today, Chambers said Cisco intends to differentiate in the data center by bringing together "silos" produced by other vendors. It is a network-based "architectural play," the CEO said.

"Why is Cisco expanding its footprint in the data center?" asked Sue Bostrom, senior VP and chief marketing officer. "This is the perfect time to really use the network as a platform," she answered rhetorically.

Transformation of the data center requires a "robust infrastructure," according to Bostrom. "Those glass house capabilities will be coming right to your house."

As next steps, Cisco and its partners plan to expand into private clouds, and after that into "federated clouds," explained Rob Lloyd, senior VP of US, Canada, and Japan.

Moore acknowledged that "some of you in the audience might question our credibility" in the data center. But, he added, Cisco first started working its way into data centers over a decade ago through a partnership with storage giant EMC.

Moore pointed out that some of Microsoft's other announced partners in the initiative, such as Microsoft and VMWare, are also long-time allies. He added that Cisco's announcement today of a systems integration pact with Accenture was preceded by an earlier agreement with Accenture about a month ago.

Jain maintained that Cisco set the stage for today's announcement with the rollouts of a line of Nexus products -- for performing functions such as integrating a virtualization hypervisor into the network switching fabric -- over the past couple of years.

Meanwhile, though, some analysts have observed that Cisco's initiative today dovetails neatly with declining opportunities right now in networking equipment such as routers and switches at cash-challenged enterprises.

Cisco's new data center architecture involves about 20 technologies either already patented or now in the process of being patented, according to Cisco officials. The technology areas involved include stateless computing, VM tagging for dynamic allocation of resources, and embedded remote systems management.