Cisco unifies the data centre

By Siyabonga Africa for Cisco
Johannesburg, 18 Mar 2009

Cisco is gunning for a large chunk of the multibillion-dollar data centre architecture market. The networking company says it will incorporate SA among its targeted emerging markets in the third quarter of this year.

A Cisco statement says its unified computing solution is an architecture that bridges the silos in the data centre into a unified architecture, using industry-standard technologies.

The solution was developed by Cisco by leveraging its technology partners, such as VMware, Intel, Microsoft and Oracle, to help its customers develop next-generation data centres for their virtualisation initiatives.

Nic Rouhotas, a consulting systems engineer for data centre technologies at Cisco, says the data centre architecture market is valued at between $85 billion (R844.3 billion) and $110 billion (R1.9 trillion). Cisco's target area lies between the $10 billion (R99.3 billion) and $20 billion (R198.7 billion) segments, which Cisco feels it is uniquely positioned to attack with its networking experience.

Cisco's new solution will be marketed first in Europe and the US, in July, before making its way to SA and other emerging markets in the second half of the year. Rouhotas explains the company will use its channel partners, such as Dimension Data and World Wide Technologies, to distribute the solution.

“The local channel will be qualified and selected by invitation to ensure they have the capability to sell and support the Cisco unified computing solution before rolling it out,” says Rouhotas. “And local companies will be able to purchase the solution from the channel partners, which make it through Cisco's authorised technology provider programme.”

Efficient virtualisation

“In SA, there is growing concern around the impact of virtualisation to the data centre facility where already the cost of operations relative to power, efficiency, cooling and management has begun overtaking the capital expenditure required to build the data centre,” says Rouhotas.

Cisco's unified computing solution will provide local customers with an energy and cost-efficient system, he notes. The reduction in cabling and active components, as well as the embedded system management, will simplify the operational aspect of the data centre, he explains.

Cisco says its new architecture leverages Nexus technology, which is focused on heat conductivity and noise reduction, and also enables rapid provisioning of services for computing, storage, virtualisation and networking. The system is based on a “wire once” methodology and provides the mechanism to associate FCoE, Ethernet, and NAS connectivity to the workloads without necessitating any re-cabling or rewiring of the system.

“It makes the data centre more efficient by consolidating a number of resources into a single, wire once, energy-efficient system that can reduce IT infrastructure costs while enabling service elasticity,” says Rouhotas.