Cisco Edging Into Virtualization With Blades Page 3

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Returning fire at HP?

Why Cisco would enter a new market, one dominated by HP, IBM and Dell, three companies
quite capable of putting up a fight, seems unusual. What may have stirred all of this
might very well be HP nudging into Cisco’s territory first.

HP has its own networking equipment, the ProCurve line. The previous CEO of HP, Carly
Fiorina, reportedly encouraged HP’s sales force to promote Cisco products over ProCurve
during her tenure. However, the new chief, Mark Hurd, made ProCurve a part of the
company’s growth strategy and is directly taking on Cisco in this area.

So is this Cisco’s way of telling HP to step off? The source familiar with Project
California thinks so, and so does Haff.

“I’m sure the people involved in it would see it that way,” he said. “It sounds like a
toe in the water, an exploration, a competitive counter and so forth, than it does a
broad based foray into the server market.”

He added “HP’s doing well with ProCurve, I don’t see them backing off where they are
having success.”

Mann agreed. “It’s not necessarily a shot directly at HP, but it’s a shot across their
bow,” he said. “They can’t afford to put aside someone like HP or IBM. The hardware in a
datacenter is predominantly HP and IBM. They’ve got to work with those companies. If they
shut either one out they dig themselves a hole.

“But it could be a message to HP that there’s overlap and Cisco will be aggressive in
the datacenter market.”

Article courtesy of InternetNews.com