The Wall Street Journal-20080128-Cisco Aims to Simplify Data Centers
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Cisco Aims to Simplify Data Centers
Full Text (357 words)Cisco Systems Inc., aiming to boost growth in one of its newer business units, is releasing a suite of hardware and software products to simplify corporate computer rooms.
The San Jose, Calif., networking giant says its Nexus Series of products will address problems that have arisen in corporate data centers, which house communication and computing equipment.
Cisco entered the data-center business in 2004, making it a relatively new entrant compared with International Business Machines Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. It has become the leading supplier by revenue of networking gear to data centers, a nearly $8 billion market, according to research firm IDC. Now the company is pushing to increase its presence in data centers with its new products, which it forecasts could turn into a $1 billion business.
Jayshree Ullal, who oversees Cisco's Data Center Group, says the Nexus Series is aimed at eliminating the "complexity" in data centers. Today, many data centers have a surplus of server computers -- the back-office computers that perform corporate tasks -- leading to a glut of computing capacity that often remains unused. Some data centers also run numerous systems for storage and computing that don't communicate well with one another, resulting in high energy costs and dwindling space.
Cisco says its Nexus Series will address some of these issues by overlaying a single system atop the current disparate storage, computing and networking systems in data centers. At the heart of the new products is technology called the NX-OS operating system, which will act as the brain of the data center.
Arun Taneja, a networking consultant and analyst with research firm Taneja Group Inc., says technology pros increasingly want "automated tools that can deal with thousands or even millions of variables" in data centers. But he cautions that Cisco's new products may take time to catch on with customers, particularly since the company isn't as a big a player in the data-center market as some rivals.
Cisco says it invested about $250 million in the Nexus Series over three years, registering 1,500 patents in the process. The Nexus Series starts at $75,000 and will be available in the second quarter.
