In the Magic Quadrant for Blade Servers, Gartner states that “blades represent an important stage in the evolution of servers as separate, discrete platforms give way to modular designs and the boundaries between servers, storage and networking become increasingly porous”.  In the report, Cisco is placed in the Visionary Quadrant, which defines “large vendors with a plan to drive market success through technology innovation.”

I relish a good working relationship with Gartner, so I won’t dwell on the report (you can parse it for yourself)—except to mention in passing that I find Cisco’s placement (and the accompanying kind words) the most interesting thread in the report.  Of course, I’m biased.

Instead of discussing that in context of the report, I’ll simply share some associated thoughts about how the analysts (as well as partners and customers, of course) have begun to realize how dead serious Cisco is about the server market.  I don’t really find that very surprising, but, then again, I spend all day long talking to “server guys.”  Heck, I’m a server guy.  Well, actually, I’m a software guy who spent long enough working for Sun to be able to fake a little feeds and speeds.  But I digress.  The point is: the server competency at Cisco is not to be underestimated. 

It might be hard to believe the server focus behind Unified Computing for those that hold their Cisco preconceptions dear, but constituencies across the datacenter are really paying attention—and, in any case, it’s the convergence of compute and network that makes the promise of Unified Fabric possible.  HP certainly gets this—at least if you are willing to see its purchase of 3Com in part as a defensive measure.  But just as I don’t want to challenge Gartner’s usage policy, I’ll leave my comments about our large, fine corporate partner on the brief side.

One final note: I know it’s somewhat controversial to blog about a particular piece of research from a given firm—for which I’ve drawn fire in the past.  The reasoning behind this is that I’m not supposed to be perceived as favoring the research or opinions of a particular firm—no matter what their market size or influence—when dealing with a wide group of opinionated analysts.  While I understand that POV, I also tend to give my audience a bit of credit.  Plus, I’ve always been of the opinion that we buy distribution rights in order to share these opinions and spark debate.  And so I am.

In the Magic Quadrant for Blade Servers, Gartner states that “blades represent an important stage in the evolution of servers as separate, discrete platforms give way to modular designs and the boundaries between servers, storage and networking become increasingly porous”.  In the report, Cisco is placed in the Visionary Quadrant, which defines “large vendors with a plan to drive market success through technology innovation.”

I relish a good working relationship with Gartner, so I won’t dwell on the report (you can parse it for yourself)—except to mention in passing that I find Cisco’s placement (and the accompanying kind words) the most interesting thread in the report.  Of course, I’m biased.

Instead of discussing that in context of the report, I’ll simply share some associated thoughts about how the analysts (as well as partners and customers, of course) have begun to realize how dead serious Cisco is about the server market.  I don’t really find that very surprising, but, then again, I spend all day long talking to “server guys.”  Heck, I’m a server guy.  Well, actually, I’m a software guy who spent long enough working for Sun to be able to fake a little feeds and speeds.  But I digress.  The point is: the server competency at Cisco is not to be underestimated. 

It might be hard to believe the server focus behind Unified Computing for those that hold their Cisco preconceptions dear, but constituencies across the datacenter are really paying attention—and, in any case, it’s the convergence of compute and network that makes the promise of Unified Fabric possible.  HP certainly gets this—at least if you are willing to see its purchase of 3Com in part as a defensive measure.  But just as I don’t want to challenge Gartner’s usage policy, I’ll leave my comments about our large, fine corporate partner on the brief side.

One final note: I know it’s somewhat controversial to blog about a particular piece of research from a given firm—for which I’ve drawn fire in the past.  The reasoning behind this is that I’m not supposed to be perceived as favoring the research or opinions of a particular firm—no matter what their market size or influence—when dealing with a wide group of opinionated analysts.  While I understand that POV, I also tend to give my audience a bit of credit.  Plus, I’ve always been of the opinion that we buy distribution rights in order to share these opinions and spark debate.  And so I am.

Learn More

http://blogs.cisco.com/collaboration/comments/the_new_collaboration_experience/ 

Hear details on Cisco WebEx Mail from Duncan Greatwood, Senior Director of Cisco WebEx Mail and former CEO of PostPath: www.cisco.com/go/arpodcasts

READERS:  What are your thoughts on the Cisco WebEx Mail news?  Do you think enterprise customers are ready to move to hosted email?

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/index.html

The presentations given by the Gartner analysts reflected some of their recently published research reports.  Throughout the conference Gartner advised that IT organizations focus on Pattern-Based Strategy, Context Aware Computing, and Operational Technologies to maintain system integrity:

1)    Pattern Based Strategy: understanding “how activities, events, objects, and information may form new patterns that represent an opportunity for innovation or a threat of disruption to business operations or strategy.  Introducing Pattern-Based Strategy, Yvonne Genovese et al, 7 August 2009

2)     Context Aware Computing:  Context-Aware Computing: Context Drives Next-Generation User Interfaces, Jackie Fenn et al, 25 September 2009

3)    Operational Technologies: Gartner defines operational technologies as “devices, sensors, and software used to control or monitor physical assets and processes in real time to maintain system integrity.”  Findings: Operational Technologies Increasingly Need to Be Integrated With IT, John P. Roberts et al, 20 October 2009

Did you attend Symposium?  How are you using these concepts to build trust in your organization?

Well, as reported in El Reg today, the first of those partners, IBM, has begun selling the Nexus 4000 (expect more vendors to follow suit).  And, as Kash points out on his excellent blog you can find the Nexus 4000 blade switch IBM description at:

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0754.html

and included in the IBM websites below:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/openfabric/fcoe.html

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/openfabric/ethernet.html

and on the Cisco website:  http://www.cisco.com/go/nexus4000

My colleague Jackie Roy summarized the recent Irwin Lazar, analyst at Nemertes, blog post correctly with:

”...growing reality that a complete collaboration strategy must integrate all potential ways that individuals and groups work together”

It is particularly interesting to see that Enterprises are looking to bring these disparate teams together but must looking at security, compliance and governance issues, and they are orchestrating a strategy that merges the old way of communicating with new tools such as microblogging and facebook-style applications for the enterprise.

http://www.analystprofiles.com/public/irwinlazar

What made this installment of the VNI all the more impactful is that a majority of the data was the result of a cooperative program between Cisco and a group of more than 20 service providers worldwide who share their anonymous, aggregated network usage to identify trends, etc. 

Consider, the following:

• About 10% of the world’s broadband subscribers generate more than 60% of all Internet traffic – ok, I’ll take some of the credit for this…have I shared with you the videos of my kids playing hockey…?

• Globally, the average broadband connection consumes about 4.3 gigabytes visual networking applications (advanced services such as video, social networking and collaboration) traffic per month.

• •  This amount is roughly the equivalent of approximately 20.5 short- form Internet videos or approximately 1.1 hours of Internet video, whether streamed on its own, embedded in a Web page, or viewed as part of video communications.

There’s a lot more good data in the study, for more information, there are some additional links below.  Enjoy

• Cisco Visual Networking Index Usage FAQ
• Cisco VNI Usage Site: http://www.ciscovni.com/
• Cisco VNI site: http://www.cisco.com/go/vni
• Cisco SP 360 Video Blog