Cisco Systems

Cisco Talks Up Data Center 3.0 Initiative, Wants To “Demistify Virtualization”

June 24, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

Cisco Systems today announced updates to several of its key products to accelerate applications in Data Center 3.0, Cisco’s vision for a virtualized data center tied together by a unified network fabric.

Today’s announcements at Cisco Live also featured new tools and training to help networking professionals master the complexity of virtualized data centers. In essence, the company is rolling out a host of software and services designed to expand what data center administrators can do with virtualization.

“Real-time collaborative applications, energy concerns and the need to achieve greater efficiency from assets are driving IT managers to transform their data centers through new technologies,” said John McCool, senior vice president and general manager, Cisco Data Center, Switching and Services Group, and co-chair of the Cisco EcoBoard . “By providing virtualization technologies across the data center, Cisco aims to help businesses achieve the agility and resiliency they need to compete on a global scale.”

Where’s the beef, you ask?

The announcements coming out of Cisco include the release of the company’s WAAS (Wide Area Application Services) software version 4.1, which offers virtualized application hosting services, application acceleration and video deliver for branch offices, and Cisco’s VFrame Data Center release 1.2 for infrastructure provisioning with Cisco’s ACE (Application Control Engine) and VMware’s ESX Server software.

In addition, Cisco is releasing version 3.1 of ACE for the ACE 4710 application switch, which offers up to 4 gigabits-per-second of throughput. The company also is announcing the Cisco Data Center 3.0 professional programs and services for support customers and partners with data center deployments. Included in the services offerings is Cisco’s new Data Center Efficiency Program, part of the company’s Data Center Assurance Program 4.0, a Web-based tool that enables users to analyze power use in the data center and identify power and cooling technologies most useful in their facilities.

WAAS 4.1, VFrame 1.2 and the ACE Appliance will be available in the third quarter.

[Source: The Register]

Cisco And EMC To Merge?

May 19, 2008 by Robin Wauters 5 Comments

We love rumors. This time, it’s not about EMC selling off its majority stake in VMware to say, Intel. President and chief editor of TMC, Rich Tehrani, is throwing another sweet-sounding one into the air: an upcoming merger between Cisco and EMC.

“If you are Cisco, it makes sense to pick up EMC now because the stock is down a bit and moreover Cisco would be able to immediately expand its product line beyond networking, telepresence and networking.

Overnight, Cisco could become a leader in storage and a very strong security player.

Remember that Cisco was an early VMware investor and they likely want to expand their ownership of the company.

Remember also that Cisco is doing some amazing things with virtualization in their routers and owning a premiere name in the virtualization space can only help their core offerings.”

What do you think? Any possibility this particular rumor might come through? Or total BS?

Let us know in comments!

IBM / Cisco Eyeing Acquisition of Citrix?

April 9, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Good thing we have a ‘Rumors’ category to assign to this type of speculations: several news outlets are running a story about Citrix possibly being an acquisition target for Cisco or IBM.

A late April fool, or plausible?

Nasdaq traders bid up Citrix stock Tuesday on takeover rumors that have either IBM or Cisco purchasing the application delivery vendor.

Citrix’s stock went from a low of $30.60 Tuesday to a high of $33.75. Rumors of Citrix being purchased fueled the higher trading prices, says Jeffrey Gaggin, an enterprise software analyst for Avian Securities. Gaggin cautions that he has no way of knowing whether the rumors hold any truth.

But it would make sense for IBM or Cisco to purchase Citrix because Citrix’s acquisition of XenSource last year made it a strong player in the virtualization market, Gaggin says.

TheStreet adds the following financial analysis:

But even at what seems like a bargain price, Citrix isn’t cheap: With a market cap of $6 billion and expected revenue growth of 17% to $1.63 billion this year, the stock could command a fair premium, taking the potential buyout price north of $7 billion, assuming a premium of 15%.

IDC analyst Stephen Elliot sees some rationale for IBM and Cisco to go after Citrix. IBM could make the XenSource hypervisor its preferred brand and could better compete against VMware and Microsoft. This would run counter to H-P’s strategy, which has professed to being indifferent on the hypervisor question, Elliot said.

On Citrix’s side, IBM would lend “a lot more credibility” to the XenSource virtualization platform and provide development resources. “There are a lot of opportunities,” Elliot said.

[Source: ChannelWeb]

Cisco To Acquire Remaining Interest In Nuova Systems

April 9, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

And why were Dante Malagrino of Cisco and Ed Bugnion of Nuova Systems jointly featured in the video presentation of Cisco Nexus 5000 we shared earlier today?

Start-up Nuova Systems operated as a majority-owned subsidiary of Cisco, which had invested $70 million and owned 80 % of the company. Cisco announced its initial investment in Nuova in August 2006 and announced an amendment to the agreement in April 2007 that expanded the development scope, increased the funding commitment and raised the maximum potential payout of the transaction to $678 million. And now Cisco has formally expressed its intent to acquire remaining interest in the company.

From the press release:

“Cisco today announced its intent to purchase the remaining 20 % interest in San Jose-based Nuova Systems, a start up focused on the development of next-generation products for the data center market. Cisco today also introduced the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series, the first product developed by Nuova. The Cisco Nexus 5000 is a 10 Gigabit Ethernet “top-of-rack” switch that offers unified fabric capabilities through the support for multiple data center networking protocols and software intelligence.”

The Nuova transaction is success-based with the total value primarily determined by the revenue of Nuova products over three measurement periods. The first measurement period will commence in early fiscal year 2010, the second measurement period will commence in late fiscal year 2010, and the third measurement period will commence in mid fiscal year 2011. The acquisition is expected to close in Q4 of Cisco’s FY 2008. It will be acquisition No. 126 for Cisco overall and the fifth one in FY ’08.

Video: Cisco Nexus 5000 And Virtualization

April 9, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

DataCenterKnowledge posted a video presentation today we would love to share with you too. It features Dante Malagrino of Cisco and Ed Bugnion of Nuova Systems with an explanation of how data center managers can use the new Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches to optimize their virtualization efforts (Cisco recently introduced the 7000 Series). Prior to joining Cisco, Bugnion was a co-founder and chief architect of VMware.

EMC Updates SAN Virtualization Solution Invista 2.1

March 3, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

EMC has introduced the latest version of Invista 2.1 (demo), its flagship SAN virtualization solution. Invista is an enterprise-class, network-based storage virtualization that combines EMC application software and hardware with intelligent SAN switches from Brocade and Cisco.

The new version of Invista features higher availability for improved data protection, expanded scalability for stronger performance, and enhanced management for better utilization, all of which help organizations keep their infrastructures up and running through both planned and unplanned events. Invista has enhanced high availability through the new distributed control path cluster (CPC) which allows nodes of the CPC to be separated by campus distances, providing for Invista to continue operating in case of localized failure. The number of virtual volumes and storage elements supported has doubled, and there is a five-fold increase in the number of simultaneous mobility sessions supported. Invista’s new heterogeneous pooling and mirroring functionality provides maximum flexibility in creating tiered storage pools and supports mirrored copies across different tiers.

EMC Invista has now been tested, optimized and certified for use with VMware ESX Server 3.0.2, thus enabling organizations to improve their ability to manage, share, and protect the growing amount of information that is being supported by VMware Infrastructure environments. EMC Invista version 2.0 is now available; version 2.1, which includes heterogeneous mirroring and storage pooling, will be available later his month. Invista support for VMware ESX Server 3.0.2 is expected to be posted to the VMware SAN Compatibility Guide before the end of 2007.

[Source: IT-Director]