Cisco in the Data Center

As expected Cisco announced its Unified Computing paradigm.

Does it have a shot in the DC?

Three reasons why I think it does:

a) The incumbent server market does not have dominant providers. Two – Sun and Dell - are hurting. The other two – HP and IBM - have been trying to run away from their server roots now for a while, enamored with larger margins in software and larger revenues in services. 

b) Data Center outsourcing is ready for a major upheaval. Recent innovations in the DC  – and there have been many from virtualization to green thinking as I wrote here – have not come from the Accentures or EDSes (now part of HP) but from unexpected places like Google, Microsoft and amazon. There is a huge disruption opportunity in that market.

c) Realize these alliances could shift quickly but Cisco with its network gear (and engineering talent to leverage into blades), EMC with storage and VMWare with virtualization make a formidable combination.