10 Networking Predictions For 2013

The Cisco-EMC/VMware Rift Widens

Try as they might to deny it, Cisco and EMC -- and EMC-majority-owned VMware -- are increasingly at odds. Sure, they're all strategic partners and have an important joint venture with a questionable future to worry about, but so many of the moves each company made in 2012 show a Cisco-EMC partnership not nearly as tight and mutually beneficial as it used to be.

Cisco, for its part, is OK with having partners it also competes with. But if Cisco pulls the trigger on a long-speculated acquisition of either NetApp or Citrix -- purely idle chatter here, folks, relax -- there would be no more room for buddy love between the network, storage and virtualization kings.

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