Cisco Introduces Rackmount Servers

1sockchuck writes "After shaking up the market for blade servers, Cisco Systems is launching a line of rackmount servers. But the company says its ambitions are more targeted than a full-scale 'all your racks are belong to us' assault on the volume server market. Cisco says it sees its 1U and 2U C-Series rackmount servers as offering an entry point to its Unified Computing System vision for companies who've built their data centers using rackmount servers instead of blades. But it thinks many customers will like the expanded memory capacity Cisco has built into the Xeon 5500/Nehalem EP processor."

Comments

Sorry Cisco

[DigiShaman]

You're a day late and a dollar short.

This market is already cornered by the likes of Dell, HP, and VMWare. Feel free to try in the market place however, but I think it's a big waste of your capitol and R&D.

Re:Sorry Cisco

[Anonymous Coward]

This market is already cornered by the likes of Dell, HP, and VMWare.

One of the things that Cisco gains by doing this is the elimination of their need to re-label HP Proliant servers for their IP telephony server products, and there are many very large companies that use such, have standardized on Cisco hardware, and will buy them.

Re:Sorry Cisco

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a day late and a dollar short.

You underestimate the power of collusion between Cisco and Gartner. My employer recently spent OODLES above and beyond that of a more reliable and featureful PBX in order to adhere to Gartner's "single source" recommendation. It doesn't matter if it costs more - it *has to be better* if it allows you to consolidate suppliers.

It really hurts me to go in to work every day knowing that I work for idiots. Instead of a 1U PBX server that just sat there untouched for TWO YEARS, now we have 20U (6 unique boxes total) that need all sorts of poking and prodding.

Cisco knows that they can just buy some high-end hookers for the people who make the big decisions, period. They really don't care if the quality is there. I'm there to hold the bag for them when the shit hits the fan.

Re:Sorry Cisco

[mcrbids]

You're a day late and a dollar short.

You don't understand how this "free market economy" works, do you?

All that's needed for Cisco is to sell more product than it costs them to make. That's called profit. So long as they make a profit, it's a good move. If they don't sell enough, then it's a short-lived moved.

The fact that you named so many vendors (Dell, HP, VMWare) makes it clear that it's still an *open* marketplace, and that there is still competition. Thus, it's not "cornered" by any stretch. In fact, not only have I *never* purchased hardware from any of the vendors you name, one of the vendors doesn't even sell hardware! (when did VMWare get into the hardware business?)

Personally, I welcome another hat thrown into the fray! The only possible thing that could come of this is lower prices, better quality, and more likely both. Predicting their demise as they enter the marketplace, when they are one of the most well-known and trusted brands in IT is just a tad premature.

Re:Sorry Cisco

[Nefarious Wheel]

Branding is important, especially when the brand name is written into contracts. There might be fewer hoops to jump through if you can single-source a solution where a single vendor is named. This lives in a place I call "procurement space".

Re:Sorry Cisco

[Anonymous Coward]

So long as they make a profit, it's a good move

It's only a good move if the profit made provides the highest NPV. Or, for a simple example. If a company spends $1m on a project that nets a dollar in a year, that's a bad move, because they could have put that $1m into government bonds and gotten at least 3% ($30k).

So profit != good. Maximum profit given available options = good.

OEM HP servers?

[c0d3r]

Last I knew, Cisco was selling products using OEM'ed HP servers. Sure they aren't just HP servers?

Take that, HP!

[binaryspiral]

HP used to provide hardware for Cisco's appliances and servers that they resold as Cisco branded gear... Call Managers and the like.

Well, HP's been really pissing off Cisco by selling ProCurve switches with lifetime warranties and converting Cisco Catalyst switch users over to HP ProCurve customers. Cisco's been losing all this SmartNet gravy that they wallow in year after year. So this is their answer... sell servers to piss in HP's very large bowl of Cheerios.

Good luck Cisco, you're entering a cut throat market with well established hardware vendors in a global recession... You've either got a large pair of brass balls or you're just really really stupid.

Re:In Cisco tradition...

[cfryback]

It'll require an expensive support contract just to load any software on it or add any new hardware to it.

Based on what we have paid for a very basic ASA 5510, I shudder to think what the support costs are! And to paraphrase other people, we have a HP cClass Blade system, that has proven to be very reliable and econmical. Did I mention that we are an HP shop? Replaced all of our 3Com switches with ProCurves, for 1/5th the cost - all with lifetime warranty and software/firmware updates as needed - all for NO ANNUAL FEE!

Re:Makes a lot of sense to me

[afidel]

Yeah instead of working with HP/IBM to support their servers they are going to have to train all their field engineers how to properly service and diagnose their new server line. Oh and IBM announced a big deal with Brocade for FC gear the day after the launch of Cisco's blade servers, I wonder how much revenue they will make on the servers vs what they are going to lose in other markets by pissing off all their partners. Unless you have a lot of clueless CTO type get snowballed by the Cisco rep I really don't see these things going anywhere.

It is called opportunity cost.

[an.echte.trilingue]

I was going to reply and say the same thing, but then I saw the parent. Just to expand (for the benefit of the GP):

The concept is called opportunity cost. Basically, the if you do A, but B would have made more money, B-A= the amount of money you lost doing A = opportunity cost.

This is, incidentally, the reason that competition in free market economies pounds out inefficiencies. If a person is efficient at programming computers but inefficient at fixing cars, then he can fix his car in less time by trading his programming for car fixing. For the mechanic, it is the other way around: he can easily earn enough in a couple of hours to pay the programmer to do what would take him days. Money is, in this sense, just a medium to facilitate this kind of exchange.

Companies work the same way. If Cisco were to open a business supplying flying cars, they could probably scratch a profit. But they lack the experience, knowledge and brand to do that efficiently. However, they are very good at networking equipment, and for the same money that it would take to make cars, they could just branch off of what they now into, say, subspace communication. Meanwhile, toyota, who already understands the fundamentals of how to build nice vehicles that people want to drive, can build the flying cars.