Data Center Server War: Cisco vs HP Vsibmvs Dell

Cisco has been seen as a pure Internet company. Cisco dominates and has a pivotal influence in the corporate and service provider networks, as well as in the routers and switch markets.

Hewlett-Packard was a longtime partner of Cisco. In partnership, HP is responsible for reselling routers and switches to Cisco while selling its data center servers, storage, corporate PCs and printers. Dell, too, is less co-operative than HP or IBM.

This is a symbiotic community of mutual benefit.

Cisco, Cisco or Cisco: Cisco grows its branch network

Cisco's success and ambition make it a mixed industry. Until 1997, Cisco had been an irreplaceable router provider for service providers. Cisco has been in a monopolistic position in the market as the Internet begins to emerge and shows its immense potential.

Cisco is able to set standards for itself, and customers and partners have no say at all. To this end, some large telecoms companies began to fund juniper, the sole purpose of which was to compete with Cisco in the service provider router market. In the ensuing years, Juniper took 30% per cent of the market from Cisco's hands.

As the routers and switches market matures and growth slows and stabilizes, Cisco is moving into "peripheral" markets to boost growth. One of the markets is the data center. In the online marketplace, Cisco has managed to stabilize its footing and take the opportunity to move into storage and server markets.

Virtualization can be said to be a Cisco game. Cisco sees the technology as a bridge between the benefits of its data center network to computing and storage. As a result, Cisco first entered the San market, then into the server market, spared no effort to promote the use of Ethernet storage technology, and this technology into new servers and switches. Through these initiatives, Cisco has transformed itself into a data center IT infrastructure company.

The intricacies of warfare: Cisco vs. Boko vs. Juniper

Of course, Cisco's moves have touched the core interests of HP, Dell and IBM. In return, HP has renewed its focus on the previously neglected ProCurve network and bought Cisco's rival 3Com company at about 3 billion dollars. HP even suspended its internal Cisco network and replaced it with a 3com/procurve hybrid solution.

Dell has strengthened its OEM relationship with brocade. With the exception of Sans, Boko has just acquired the Ethernet switch manufacturer Foundry Network company. Subsequently, Dell acquired the high-performance switch manufacturer Force10 Network, and used the company's products in its own data center network product family.

IBM has also begun to strengthen its relationship with Cisco's rival Juniper Network in the router market, helping Juniper develop its own Qfabric data center and cloud Fibre Channel switches, while naming the juniper Company's switches and routers. At the same time, IBM has acquired the Blade Network technology company of the data center Blades Switch Company. Before being bought, Blade Network technology company has been in the dislocation competition with Cisco.

Cisco will enter the server market as long as Cisco's goal is to achieve the absolute advantage of the data center network. Server giants Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Dell have responded by acquiring and co-operating with Cisco Data Center network rivals. There are reports predicting that HP's/ibm/Dell Camp will cost Cisco $2 billion a year for its revenues, but Cisco will eventually convince it vendors to deploy integrated server/switch/virtualization products and storage access architectures. As a result, Cisco can not only make up for its previous losses but also get more profit from it.

What will be the end of the situation? To be sure, Cisco will continue to dominate the data center switch market, while HP, IBM and Dell will continue to dominate the data center server market. Can Cisco become a leader in data center servers in the future, and can 3Com, Force10, juniper and blades make the current leading server manufacturer HP/ibm/Dell into a reliable data center network provider?

The two camps will fight in the future on the ideas and funding of it vendors. It can be predicted that their struggle will be intense and will last a long time.

As the National rugby league star Terrell Owens said: "The outcome, let us wait and see."