They claim their architecture will make it easier to marry network policies to mobile virtual machines.
Perdikou: That's marketing speech for a proprietary implementation. Today, every time Intel comes up with a new microprocessor, within a couple of weeks any customer can pick up the phone and get no less than six vendors to come in and bid, all with that latest microprocessor. Now, look at UCS. The next time Intel comes up with a new microprocessor the customer who adopted UCS has to sit there waiting for Cisco to come around to upgrade their system? And when it comes to virtualization, there are multiple proposals right now in standards bodies trying to standardize the virtual machine-to-networking interface, including what kind of a state it has to carry when it migrates from one place to the other, in what format that state be carried, etc. It's a matter of standardization.
Once completed, even when the customer utilizes servers and network equipment from different vendors, the virtual machine should be able to migrate from one server to another server through various kinds of network equipment. It has nothing to do with integrating things together.
UCS is absolutely a lock-in strategy on Cisco's part. Because of my background, customers ask me for my opinion about UCS. And I say, "Well, if you are a small business and you believe for the lifetime of your business you can stay within the scope of UCS, then yes, Cisco has done the pre-integration with virtualization software, management software, did the pretesting, it's ready to go."
But in the long term I don't think it's the right thing to do. The bulk of the industry wants separated computing, server, storage and networking. The customer wants the fungibility, an interchangeable capability.
So, whereas Cisco is bold enough, arrogant enough to say, let's carve out this area and provide the whole thing to the customer, partner or no partners, Juniper focuses on the networking domain, working with all the traditional data center citizens -- the server, storage and appliances vendors -- and even all the on ramp/off ramp vendors -- the NIC card vendors, the HBA vendors. We don't invade their area. That kind of crossing is hurting the fungibility of this whole ecosystem, and it's not really good for the customers.
In closing here then, any final thoughts?
Yen: The IT world is going through a very significant overhaul and it's going to continue for at least another five to 10 years. So, it's a very significant time and very exciting.
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