Finding The Right Blade Balance

Cisco Systems earlier this month stepped into a brave new world with the launch of its first-ever blade server, part of its increasingly broader focus on the data center market.

While company executives will argue that Cisco's new Unified Computing System is much more than just a blade server—that it, in fact, combines computing power, networking, storage and virtualization—it's that blade server piece that's the most intriguing.

For one thing, it puts Cisco into direct competition with a host of server vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems (or IBM/Sun, if rumors of that acquisition turn out to be true). For another, Cisco has built the product line on the premise that it can force a fundamental change in the way IT departments are structured. Just as the technology bridges the silos of networking, computing and storage, the data center personnel that traditionally operate in those same silos will need to work together.

Same goes for solution providers. Partners will need to bring down the barriers between practice areas that today exist as separate entities. This is a paradigm that is all too familiar to Cisco's partners. They were asked to make a similar leap when Cisco's fixation on VoIP and unified communications meant that network integrators had to learn about voice, and voice-focused interconnects had to learn all about IP. The end result was a new breed of channel partner that was fluent in both. Many partners made the move both willingly and successfully. But with all of the attention (and marketing dollars) Cisco lavished on VoIP, there was a group of Cisco partners—those that preferred to stick to their networking knitting, and those that specialized in other disciplines, such as security—that suddenly felt like second-class citizens.

It's a scenario Cisco will need to avoid now, since the overwhelming majority of Cisco partners won't be working with UCS in the foreseeable future. Cisco executives clearly understand that there are a limited number of Cisco partners that carry both the expertise and the desire to play in the blade server space. There are about 250 partners worldwide that have earned Cisco's data center specialization, and only 30 to 50 of those will be part of the initial channel program the vendor is building in support of UCS.

As Cisco works to build its data center momentum, its challenge will be to continue to nurture the thousands of channel partners, particularly the smaller ones, that aren't chasing data center dollars. Its opportunity will be in bringing out an SMB-focused data center offering that entices its broader partner base into that market. If those partners start to feel neglected, there are plenty of rival vendors waiting to scoop them up.

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