Comments on: Cisco declares war, embraces open source

Cisco Systems is attacking the world with its new Unified Computing initiative, and although the technology is proprietary, open-source software plays a key role.

[botchagalupe]

RE: embraces open source

I'm guessing you missed the the BMC Bladelogic part of the UCS announcement.

John
johnmwillis.com

[Mr. Dee]

John, stop making wild predictions. First it was Linux owning Netbooks which ended up being 90% Windows solution. Now you are saying Linux will be owning this CISCO initiative. Thanks for jinxing it I guess.

Whats with you and Redhat lately? Are you being paid secretly be their mouthpiece on CNET?

[odubtaig]

John?

Your usual level of fact checking then.

[zelrik]

@Mr. Dee,

If I were, I would think a bit more and stop believing whatever you read on internet. I know where that 90% is coming from (NPD Group) and for some reason that decreases your credibility by the same amount : 90%.

[saltylaker]

I am surprised as well that your article seems to portray open source as simply RedHat. Somehow like using RedHat is support for all open source and its principles. The competitors in the server market, such as IBM and Sun Microsystems are far more committed to open source than Cisco.

[osultan]

Matt:

Good perspective on the open source aspects of our Cisco UCS--I had not seen much coverage of the Red Hat or Novell angle. The one point I would like to clarify is that terming Cisco data center Ethernet (DCE) "proprietary" is a bit misleading. Cisco has been shipping DCE as its basis for delivering a unified fabric for almost a year now in partnership with the likes of Emulex, Intel, QLogic, and VMware. The protocols that underpin DCE are currently going through the IEEE standards process and Cisco has already committed to maintain compliance with the final IEEE standard.

Omar Sultan
Cisco
blogs.cisco.com/datacenter

[McFerg505]

Ah Yes. Cisco, the flag bearer of Open Standards. Gimme a break.

[pentest]

When Cisco stops adding crap to existing protocols for the purpose of making it difficult to allow other network gear then you can prattle on about standards compliance.

Until then, just be happy that you charge 5 times too much and ****.

[jaganesundar]

Matt,

While I agree that open source is a likely to be a big part of the Cisco blade server business, I am not convinced that this is necessarily a good thing for Redhat.

Consider this scenario - If Cisco was to create an App Store equivalent for their Virtualized Datacenter, they could do for Enterprise Software what Apple has done for Mobile Applications.

Applications could be packaged as Virtual Appliances - a custom Linux, an open source database, Apache and/or Tomcat plus the Application itself.

Fixed functionality is offered by these Virtual Appliances, and they are supported by the provider of the Virtual Appliance.

This completely eliminates the complexity of setting up and configuring these applications, and thereby stresses the business model of many open source companies.

-- Jagane Sundar
Founder, Thinsy Corporation
http://www.thinsy.com/

[idfubar]

You've clearly missed the orders of magnitude difference in deployment complexity between a $.99 application like "Flick Fishing" and, say, SugarCRM.

There already are "app stores" for enterprise software (e.g. http://www.jumpbox.com/) - they don't necessarily accelerate the "uptake" of open-source solutions since (IMHO) the obstacles tend to be organizational rather than technical.

[meh130]

Not sure where you got this idea of the Cisco systems using a proprietary version of Ethernet. What Cisco calls "Data Center Ethernet" (DCE), Intel calls Enhanced Ethernet for Data Center (EEDC), and other vendors call "Converged Enhanced Ethernet" (CEE), is standards based:

802.1Qaz Enhanced Transmission Selection
802.1Qbb Priority-based Flow Control
Data Center Bridging (Managed by the IEEE Data Center Bridging Task Group). DCB is expected to leverage functionality provided by 802.1AB-2005 Link Layer Discovery Protocol
802.1Qau Congestion Notification

Yes, the standards are a work in progress at this point, but products from multiple Ethernet switch vendors already support some of these features in a pre-standards for, all major vendors are committed to supporting the final standards, and Ethernet switches supporting these features will be available from multiple vendors.

Today Cisco, Intel, Emulex, QLogic, Brocade, and Blade Network Technologies are just some of the vendors supporting DCE/CEE features. IBM is also a strong supporter of Enhanced Ethernet.

[pentest]

Cisco is well-known for implementing existing protocols, and then adding a few minor things to make sure its customers can't use anything else but Cisco's overpriced equipment.

[groveramit]

Hello pentest,
I would agree with you that they over priced, We are a company based in India and our UM is priced far to low, top it all the maintenance and human intervention is also on the higer side.

Regards,
Amit Grover
Business Development Manager - International Sales
http://www.alliance-infotech.com