Cisco's interest in cloud computing will build its own storage cloud

Cisco has a lot of interest in cloud computing and will build its own computing or storage cloud, according to foreign media sources at its press conference,-cisco live. Compete with vendors like Amazon, IBM, Oracle and Sun, which are building their own cloud, as every telecoms company, service provider, and Internet hosting company do. The entire IT world is not just about cloud-like Earth, but also clouds like Venus, or at least the eddy that forms Jupiter.

With the end of June, Cisco system's "California" Unified Computing Blade server and related network equipment also came to the expected launch time. In today's online video bulletin for analysts and partners and Cisco's two-day analyst press conference at-cisco Live, the Cisco representative at the meeting dodged the question of whether the California system would still be launched as planned by El Reg, But they are going to introduce cloud computing at the meeting and how their WebEx and networks complement the company's cloud strategy.

Cisco's chief technology Officer Padmasree Warrior's speech is as stylized as the IT executive's speech we heard at any time. They explored cloud computing and its trends, and they even said that cloud computing realized the decades-old dream of varying kinds of distributed multi-tier flexibility, a flexible calculation that has been coveted by people since the phone company was born (not by Microsoft or Google).

In any case, Cisco Systems is interested in cloud computing, apparently integrating networks and storage, and their blades and rack-top servers and their virtualized servers and networks will play a role, or even play a role, in the cloud computing arena. We're all looking forward to it.

The reason is simple: people think they can make a profit by selling something called "cloud". Cisco quoted IDC Consulting last October estimates that the total sales of various types of cloud computing products in 2008 amounted to $16 billion trillion, to 42 billion U.S. dollars in 2012, a composite annual growth rate of 27%, more than 5 times times the projected growth rate in the IT sector. Of course, because the economy is still not optimistic, if IDC consulting companies to restart cloud computing forecasts, they may think it hardware and software sales slowdown, the cloud computing market remains stable or as companies want to save money through the cloud to achieve steady growth. As we all know, adverse economic forms can force it technology to make periodic changes.

Clouds have different meanings and concepts for many different people. Warrior explains that Cisco divides cloud computing into four echelon. At the bottom is the IT infrastructure, which includes servers, storage, and networks, and the entire unified Computing unit is the participant in this infrastructure. In this area, Cisco plans to compete with IBM and HP and forge partnerships with companies such as Emc,vmware and Microsoft.

The next echelon of warrior Analytics is infrastructure, service, which means Cisco will sell cloud computing products like Amazon's Flex computing cloud, S3 and EBS storage. Warrior a slide show to date the main provider of cloud computing, Amazon, At&t, BT, HP, Ibm,sun Oracle, Savvis, Telstra and Terremark. Cisco will not be one of them, although they will inevitably try to build commercial clouds and sell cloud products.

But that means Cisco is competing with the main users of the building cloud, and if Cisco shows them the economic situation and the operational advantages of the product, those users are likely to choose the Californian system to do the job. This is no doubt taboo, at least until the unified computing system products are sold to telecom and hosting providers before they can take action.

Warrior stressed that "we are not planning to become a service provider". In a question-and-answer session at the press conference, Warrior explained that the original capability of the sales computing cloud was "contrary to our business model", but soon she added that Cisco would definitely build its own internal cloud (probably based on the California Unified Computing blade and unified fiber). To run applications that are provided to the user as a service.

Cisco believes that for their own cloud applications, the Californian system can reduce the cost of their servers, storage and networks, and infrastructure investment can be reduced by 30%, thanks to the advantages of integration and virtual networks and integrated server and network management, the cost of building infrastructure can be reduced by 20%. This, in theory, also gives Cisco more opportunities to compete with WebEx than other companies. When buying storage from EMC, Dennerline says, they can also be stored at similar or identical prices, just as Google uses their low-cost self-produced servers. Dennerline, referring to the contrast with Google's infrastructure, rather than other commercial blade servers, said that "more work can be done to create an economic competitive advantage using a unified computing system".

For now, Cisco believes that the company will build its own internal cloud, and that it intends to put some of its work on the public cloud and possibly create a half private cloud. Cisco also believes that these clouds will be the "Inter-cloud" that Warrior refers to for 5-6 of years from now. Connected.