Report: Cisco faces uphill battle to get early UCS adoption

Peter Dinham
Sunday, 22 March 2009 06:52

IT Industry - Deals

Technology industry analysts, Technology Business Research (TBR) predict the IT market will be slow to adopt Cisco’s just released all-in-one Unified Computing System (UCS) and cautions that Cisco faces a considerable challenge to get customers to even consider bundled hardware and software.

TBR says that while the announcement in the past few days by Cisco of its UCS may not have sent major shockwaves throughout the networking industry, it certainly caused more than a few small tremors and, as Stuart Corner wrote in iTWire this week - http://www.itwire.com/content/view/23854/127/ - Cisco is clearly aiming to dominate the data center market with its UCS architecture.

According to NBQ director at TBR, John Byrne, most datacenters have already standardised on hardware and software vendors, and are committed to a best-of-breed model for new acquisitions.
 
“It will therefore be a challenge for Cisco to get customers to consider bundled hardware and software.”

Byrne also says that many companies have frozen non-essential purchasing until the economy stabilises, so new and comprehensive products are unlikely to be considered in the short term.
 
“UCS is clearly a long-term investment for Cisco,” says Byrne, “an adjacent market that the company hopes will provide a new source of revenue to fuel growth as IT department’s transition to this new form of computing.
 
“With more than $30 billion in cash, Cisco is one of few vendors who can make such an aggressive play in the current economic climate,” Byrne adds.

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