Data Center 3.0 and Tightening Budgets
We had Robert Scoble swing by the Cisco DNA lab yesterday to learn a little bit more about data center 3.0 and talk about what we can do in the near term to help customers deal with the repercussions of this economy—declining budgets, M&A activity, reduced headcount and the like.
You can find the interview here or if you have a FaceBook account, better quality video here.
Having been in this industry for a decade or two, the usual response to a down economy is fairly predictable: stop spending and lower headcount. The cool thing this time around is that companies have a much wider array of tools at their disposal to provide a much more calibrated response. For example, in the video, we talk a bit about how virtualization can help reduce costs, how automation can improve staff productivity, and how cloud-based infrastructure can provide a whole different approach to supporting apps.
The other difference I am seeing this time around—and we talked about this off-camera—is that companies are not automatically going into hermit mode until the economy settles down. Many folks see opportunity in the turmoil and the tools mentioned above (virtualization, automation, clouds, etc) let them cut costs and still strategically invest in the business. This is something Cisco did after the fallout from the tech bubble and I wold expect us to do the same thing this time around.
Posted by Omar Sultan at 07:52AM PST
Jack Hughes Nov 27, 2008
For the companies that didn’t scoff at the debt trough it is party time. There are some great opportunities out there for people with cash. Anybody with debt is going to have a hard time.