Cisco Goes On-Demand With IBM

IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM)and Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) today announced a wide-ranging alliance centered around blade servers and on-demand computing (see Cisco, IBM Go for Data Centers and Cisco, IBM Bless Blades).

The deal, first reported on this site yesterday, has Cisco making a new switch for IBMs BladeCenter product. Both companies will be able to benefit from the growing interest IT managers have in blade servers, which provide a high-density solution to the restricted space found in many data centers (see IBM's BladeServer Blitz).

Longer-term, the impact of today’s announcement is likely to be felt in the area of provisioning -- allocating resources around servers, storage, and networks. This forms a key part of on-demand computing, which is fast becoming an IBM mantra.

Yesterday, IBM previewed its virtualization engine, which will extend the virtualization capabilities found on IBM’s mainframes into its storage and server empires. A key element of the virtualization engine is the Tivoli Provisioning Manager (see IBM Revs Virtualization Engine).

As part of today’s announcement, Tivoli Provisioning Manager has been enhanced to support automated provisioning for Cisco's Catalyst 6500 switch, its Intelligent Gigabit Ethernet Switch Module, and its MDS 900 SAN Switch family.Cisco has been pretty upfront about its ambitions in the on-demand, or utility, computing space (see Cisco Wants to Be a Utility Player).

But Frank Dzubeck, president of analyst firm Communications Network Architects, warned that today's announcement may have the unforeseen effect of morphing IT and network staff into one organism, which is like inviting cats to sleep in a dog pound. He says, “The IT guys are now on the same console as the network guys -- you are going to have much closer synergy between IT and networking.”

Today’s announcement certainly makes some sense of Cisco’s "Business Ready Data Center” initiative, which appeared loosely defined when it was unveiled earlier this month.

The new combined strategy’s name leaves a little to be desired: "Cisco Business Ready Data Center Optimized With IBM for the On Demand Operating Environment." Perhaps the technological integration will be less kludgy than the marketing.

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-gen Data Center Forum0