IBM's Big Partnership Play

IBM announced it is expanding its OEM relationship by private labeling Brocade's 8000 FCoE switch and Junipers EX and MX series switches and router as IBM brands. IBM has also reached a reseller agreement with Cisco to sell the Nexus 5000 switch.  Why all three? The four-part harmony led by IBM is choice, choice, choice. I think the reality is that IBM wants to expand it Dynamic Datacenter initiative which Brocade and Juniper are aligning themselves with at IBM's direction and Cisco is simply a must have resell.

Brocade's 8000 1U top-of-rack FCoE switch that sports 24 10Gbps CEE switch ports to interconnect servers and the rest of the network and 8 8Gbps Fibre Channel ports to interconnect to a SAN. The CEE ports can be trunked to aggregate capacity. Like most FCoE devices, the 8000 translates FCoE frames between the switch and server to FC for the SAN. IBM is also OEMing Brocades Converged Network Adapters (CNA) for servers. OEMing Brocades 8000 make sense for IBM by adding an FCoE product to their portfolio.

IBM is also reselling Cisco Nexus 5000 switches that also support FCoE, CEE, and 10GB Ethernet. The Nexus 5010 sports 20 10Gb SFP+ ports and 8 Fibre Channel ports and is similar to the Brocade 8000 . The Nexus 5020 has 40 10Gb ports and Fibre Channel is through an expansion module.

IBM is also extending its OEM of Junipers EX 4200 and 8200 edge and core switch respectively as well as Junipers MX series routers. Juniper hasn't yet jumped on the FCoE and CEE band wagon stating that the economics aren't right for FCoE. With T11  finalizing FCoE in June, we should start seeing products rolling soon but Juniper's Mike Banic, Vice President of Marketing, Ethernet Platforms Business Group, doesn't expect to see FCoE demand grow until mid 2010.  

Granted FCoE  and CEE are still relatively new, but it appears Juniper is late to the game. Their EX 4200 that IBM is OEMing is a gigabit switch with 2 10GB uplink ports and the core switch, the EX8200 only support 64 10GB ports per EX8208 or 128 10GB ports for the EX8216. Juniper needs to provide 10Gb CEE switches to remain competitive against the likes of Cisco and Brocade. Of course, Juniper is notoriously close lipped about product directions, so I'd bet they are working on 10Gb Ethernet top of rack/end or row switches for sometime in 2010, or sooner.IBM's Interest

So what's with IBM's happy noise about choice? Doug Armbrust, Director of Data Center Networking for IBM, said "we are seeing an explosive growth in data passing over the network,  which means our customers are going to have to expand. IBM wants choices for networks so that customers can pick the solution that fits them best." That is a sentiment that was echoed by all the other vendors as well. Very well scripted.

Data center computing is getting denser which is driving networking architectural changes from home running to a central switch  to more modular and localize top of rack and end of row switches that integrate with a core switch.  Operationally that means more switches to configure, manage, and upgrade. Junipers unified networking fabric dubbed the Stratus Project includes functions like flattening the data center network to reduce hops and virtualizing the switching infrastructure into a single management domain as a virtual switch. Cisco, on the other hand, is using the Fabric Extender to add more managed ports to the Nexus switches and has plans to backport the Fabric Extender to the Catalyst 6500. Virtualizing switches should also make integration with data center and orchestration software simpler and more robust. That latter component fits into IBM's  dynamic data center driven by their Systems Director which is a management platform to mange physical and virtual computing resources.

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I asked Armbrust why choose Brocade, Cisco, and Juniper, he was somewhat circumspect not wanting to list out pro's and cons, but when pressed, he did say that Brocade has experience and products in storage and [with the acquisition of Foundry in 2008] data networking which represents the kind of convergence that IBM is looking for. Juniper, for its part, has the experience in high speed routing and building robust equipment plus they are making in-roads with enterprises. And Cisco is the market leader also working on converged data center networking.My Take

Here's what I think IBM is doing. On the surface, I think IBM is doing exactly what they say: trying to be agnostic and give their customers the choice of preferred vendor whether that choice is based on best product fit or comfort level with a particular company. Nobody gets fired for buying IBM or Cisco, right?

What I find most interesting is that both Brocade and Junipers arrangements are OEM deals while Cisco's is a reseller. Now Cisco has no incentive to private label their equipment--not with 65+ market share. In fact, doing so would probably be counterproductive. Brocade is big in storage, but if, and this is a big IF, CEE takes hold in data centers, the storage landscape where vendors protect each other back with approved equipment lists may go the way of the Token Ring. For Brocade, that mean an uncertain long term growth plan. It will take years for there to be a significant change in data center storage, so acquiring Foundry is a preemptive move by Brocade.

Juniper, on the other hand seems further down the road of IBMs dynamic data center path and Junipers growing mind share can't be ignored. Anecdotally, everyone one I have talked to that are using Juniper switches moved from some other vendor and are very happy to make the switch. IBM wants to be the end to end data center provider complete with infrastructure, software, servers, and design experience to deploy, manage, automate, and orchestrate data center computing and networking.  In fact, the IBM relationship with IBM is so important to Juniper, Andy Vandeveld, Vice President of IBM Strategic Alliance with Juniper, is dedicated to deepening and the relationship with Big Blue.

IBM has more cachet with Brocade and Juniper to direct product directions and integration efforts that benefit all of them. Cisco, on the other hand is just the market leader in switching and IBM needs to continue to resell Cisco's equipment since many organizations are unlikely to rip and replace their Cisco equipment or even migrate from Cisco to someone else. I have to think that IBM sales people are going to have incentives to sell IBM OEM equipment over Cisco, particularly as IBM solidifies its dynamic data center plans.

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IBM's real competition is HP, which offers similar functions and goals to unify and automate the data center. It's a big challenge that takes integrated equipment and design expertise. I am looking forward to see how this shakes out over the next few years.