I’ve been reading the coverage of the massive Cisco datacenter cloud sweeping product announcements.  It is chock full of details.  If you want a quick summary of the announcements here are some great links.  The Wikibon Project, the open analyst site, has a detailed blog post, a detailed community “open” research note, and video commentary from founder Dave Vellante and Sr Analyst Stu Miniman, which I especially like.  See the partner links below for more navigation to some their positions and support for Cisco.

My Angle

I first have to say that Cisco did a great job on the social media news release on this launch.  I also would agree with a post from EMC executive Chad Sakak that Cisco’s post is the same as EMCs recent Megalaunch – massive.

Also, go review the Cisco press release. It is “stuffed with meat”. Granted, it’s Cisco curated “meat”.  They have everything there to look at.  My brain is full, and I’m sure this will keep the analysts and bloggers chewing for a while, myself included.  I have a lot of homework to do to get deep into this, but here is my quick angle – (see links above to sources that have good deep early angles on the news).

Over the years, and most recently last year, Cisco has been telling us “no, we’re open…” but many including me, were skeptical.  I’ve been critical of Cisco for their closed approach.  Tide seems to be changing.  Cisco is opening up.  They are laying out all the data on the “table” .   My first impression is that Cisco is “all in” on unified “fill in the blank” as well as “end to end” solution.  I see hints that there is a change  from a vendor lock in architecture to one that is open.  This seems to openly supported by Cisco’s ecosystem.  Their support looks strong.

Even though Cisco has been under pressure from Juniper in the networking space, they don’t flinch at Juniper’s advances.  Cisco is not just a networking company.  They are a diverse multinational entitywith many different product lines and technologies and have to design products to allow their customers to implement their products and technology across a multitude of use cases.  This is the “unified” message in the launch today.  Making all the products work together at scale will always be a challenge.

Bottom line: Cisco recognizes that the game has changed.  Cisco’s massive launch isn’t about Cisco Vs. Juniper.  It’s about Cisco Vs. themselves.  Given Cisco market position, power, and customer base, they have a unique opportunity to build and deliver products and technology for the converged end to end architecture.

Conclusion: The winner in the future will have to deliver scalability and intelligence that scales “old school” data centers to “new school” cloud centers then to ultimately the “future school” (aka “big data view”) of information centers.

BONUS SECTION:  The Social Media Scorecard – Battle of the Partners Blog Posts

In the battle among the competitors in an effort to win favor and keep the attention of Cisco, Cisco’s partners EMC, NetApp, QLogic, Emulex, HDS, and Intel all put out posts that speak to their relationship with the big “whale” in Cisco.

Here is my summary of the winners and losers in today’s release or battle of the partner’s blog posts:

NetApp Vs. EMC:

NetApp and EMC both had support for the launch.  I reviewed their blog posts and have rendered my initial verdict.  Check out NetApp’s blog post titled:  Support for Cisco Director-Class Multihop FCoE & New Ethernet Advantage Program.  Mike McNamara writes a good post. To me it’s the classic “vanilla” post. Adequate text and a couple of graphs, but I really didn’t fall out of my chair.  Not a lot of meat on the bone from NetApp.

EMC lays down an epic post on their alignment with Cisco on the announcement by the dynamic and always entertaining Chad Sakak.  Chad goes into great detail in his post,  and he had it right on.  Cisco is having their Megalaunch moment.  Chad is referring to the big January EMC Megalaunch where EMC put all their “chips on the table”.  SiliconANGLE covered the EMC Megalaunch both in NYC and London.  Video coverage here.

Winner:  EMC

Emulex Vs. QLogic:

Emulex and QLogic both put out press releases that say they support Cisco’s new Data Center Fabric.  Here is Emulex’s press release and here is QLogic’s post. This is the fibre channel war between the two biggest players.  I’ve been following them for over a year now, and QLogic has been consistently rolling up the market and now has switches.  Emulex still holds on some of their share but the analysts and customers are all voting with their purchases.  Advantage goes to QLogic on product leadership.

Winner: QLogic

HDS Stands Alone

HDS Hu Yoshida put out a provocative post on a vision tie in to Cisco.  Great read on the thought leadership and decent tie in, but all concepts.  No meat on the bone.   Hitachi HDS has meat on the bone but didn’t go into details to share.  Looking for the Hitachi “meat on the bone” check out some videos from theCube event SiliconANGLE.TV covered last Fall.

Winner by default:  Hitachi HDS

Intel verses ???:

No one showed up to take on Intel.  They are a winner in the server chip, but Intel was absent in the 10Gb adapter discussion.

No Decision:  Intel