Cisco has been on a software acquisition spree this past year, acquiring Jabber, PostPath, and now Tidal Software, among others. But as Cisco goes after the data center with its new Unified Computing push, one open-source company should be on Cisco's radar screen: Reductive Labs, creators of the Puppet project, a framework for automating system administration.
(Credit:
Reductive Labs)
Tidal is a performance-monitoring solution for data centers. It's a nice start, and a definite upgrade over Cisco's baseline Unified Computing management tools. But as Forrester senior analyst Glenn O'Donnell suggests, "Cisco is the new kid in town in the data center and will need a solid software strategy to go against HP and IBM."
In other words, Cisco needs a more holistic data-center management strategy, and Puppet could play a key role. Puppet gives Cisco the ability to semantically encode "why" instead of just "what" or "how" into data center solutions, making data center deployments more manageable over time:
I was only seeing the static state of the working system. What if you want to change things? If you have working images, you have to reconstruct "What" by discovery, good luck with "Why." If you are lucky, it was you that set up the systems and it wasn't over six months ago. The "What" and "Why" were apparent to someone, potentially you, when the systems were first set up, but now you just have this bucket of bootable bits that ostensibly does something. If it isn't working, or there is a need to change something significant, the choice is poking around the bucket of bits until the new "What" is in place or starting over with a new "Why" that is lost as soon as the new image is finished.
If Puppet is building your services, "What" and "Why" can be recorded, clarified, recovered, and manipulated. Version control becomes straight forward, manageable, and transparent. Services can have clear definitions and relationships. So obvious...can't believe it took me this long to "get it"...
In other words, describing services in Puppet provides both the ability to configure machines but also the ability to ensure they are configured properly over time. An enterprise data center isn't static. Understanding and configuring its dynamics is what makes Puppet so interesting, and what should make it intriguing to Cisco.
Even virtualization doesn't make this any easier. If anything, it compounds the problem of management. Puppet, however, can facilitate management of virtual servers.
Cisco is entering an established market with strong incumbents like IBM and HP. To win, it needs to innovate in its data center strategy. Puppet, used by Stanford, Google, Sony, and other leading-edge companies, could offer it a way to disrupt the incumbents with an innovative approach to IT management: a way to manage data-center resources over time, and not merely at deployment.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Cisco Systems doesn't seem to know how to color inside the lines.
The networking-equipment giant has been foraging in a diverse set of new markets lately, taking on Microsoft in the collaboration and unified-communications markets, but now sticking a finger in the eye of longtime server partners Hewlett-Packard and IBM by jumping into the server market, as The New York Times reports.
Is Cisco reckless, or simply smart?
Whichever the case may be, Cisco just took on a host of powerful competitors. All at once. Sun Microsystems' Zack Urlocker notes that Sun, among others, is jumping into Cisco's profitable network equipment market. It was bound to happen that partners would become competitors to Cisco, as they sought to eke out a living in a recessed economy.
What wasn't certain is just how grand Cisco's ambition could be and how fast it would happen. As CNET's Marguerite Reardon writes, Cisco isn't going halfway with its new Unified Computing push:
It shouldn't come as a surprise that the company's new data center server strategy, announced Monday, is fueled by a grand vision to not only help its corporate customers improve efficiency and reduce costs, but also (to) transform how average consumers can access loads of cool new applications on cheap devices.
Few companies have the luxury to make such bold moves. Cisco, as well as IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft, is one that can.
Intriguingly, Cisco's Unified Computing initiative puts it into close collaboration with Linux leader Red Hat, as the two are collaborating to ensure that Cisco's new servers run seamlessly with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). While VMware and Microsoft got a lot of coverage in the Cisco announcement, my conversations with executives behind the scenes reveals a different picture:
- Cisco has been working on this project for more than a year, and it initially figured that it could cover the market with VMware for virtualization, and Windows and RHEL as the operating systems. However, when the company talked with early prospects roughly nine months ago, the vast majority reported that they were using VMware or virtualization in only 5 percent to 10 percent of the workloads Cisco was targeting for its Unified Computing push. They weren't using Windows, either. Virtually all of them were using Unix or RHEL, with a large swath embracing RHEL.
- RHEL, in fact, is expected to claim 80 percent to 90 percent of Cisco's Unified Computing customers: those using VMware for virtualization but running RHEL as a guest server operating system, and those not yet comfortable using virtualization in high-end computing workloads, will use RHEL as their base operating system.
While Cisco's Unified Communication technology is hardly open source--Cisco has built its own proprietary Ethernet, for heaven's sake!--the initiative will largely depend on open-source software. In my conversations with executives involved in the initiative, Red Hat, specifically, and open-source proponents, generally, are deemed to be critical to its success.
This isn't surprising, given how integral open source is to Cisco's other new initiatives, such as its push into collaboration, which involved the acquisitions of PostPath (which also includes Zimbra's open-source Web client in its offering) and Jabber, as well as a variety of open-source projects from the Apache Software Foundation and elsewhere.
HP's vice president of marketing for enterprise servers and storage, Jim Ganthier, dissed Cisco's foray into his market with a dismissive hiss:
It may have looked like a really great idea on paper, but as they start to wade into the water, they may find out that there are some things in the water that they don't like.
Maybe. But Cisco has the heft to completely dam HP's river and fill a lake. That's the plan. And open source will play a major role in making it happen.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
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