Cisco Switches Game Plan Into Storage

Analysts called it a watershed event, and the news probably didn't please Fibre-Channel-switch market leaders, such as McData and Brocade Communications Systems. Now, the question is whether Cisco can apply the same muscle and wherewithal it used to become a successful IP switch company to become a contender in the storage world.

Cisco executives are marching to a confident drumbeat: CEO John Chambers has listed storage as one of his "seven big bets." Last month, Chambers gave his company a 50/50 chance to be No. 1 in storage. Plus, Cisco executives say Chambers always wants his company to be the No. 1, or No. 2, market leader in whatever market it plays in.

"Which [means a 50 percent share of that market," says Ed Chapman, senior director of product management at Cisco's storage-technology group. "As you can see, we have some pretty lofty goals."

It's easy to understand why Cisco views the storage market as an opportunity. Gartner Dataquest reports that by 2003, 53 percent of the storage market will be based on direct-attached storage (DAS), while 47 percent will be networked storage. By 2005, those figures are expected to shift to 31 percent DAS and 69 percent networked storage.

Cisco sees storage as a market that is still maturing. Executives draw parallels between the evolution of LANs during the 1980s,when businesses were connecting their local networks to others to form larger LANs,and networked storage today. So, this is just another network to Cisco.

Not a Sure Bet

But analysts and competitors say Cisco's move into storage may not be easy. For one, Cisco's expertise in networking does not necessarily translate into expertise in Fibre Channel.

"There is a difference between running a multiterabyte, high-performance database on a storage network vs. serving Web pages on an IP network," says Steve Beer, director of volume hardware platforms at Brocade. "The expertise you need to deliver storage is different than the expertise acquired in delivering an IP network."

Cisco's switch products are expected to ship at the end of this year. And the company has announced some partnerships,with Adaptec, ADIC, BMC Software, EMC, Emulex, Hitachi Data Systems and QLogic. But, as Data Mobility Group analyst John Webster says, "So far, Cisco has given scant evidence that it's aware of the switch-interoperability issue."

Cisco hasn't even revealed the distribution model it will use. Brocade and McData rely heavily on OEM deals, so customers are assured their switches are interoperable with the other storage components throughout the food chain.

"There are still a lot of question marks," says Anders Lofgren, senior industry analyst at Giga Information Group. "Cisco's experience is as a networking company. It's not known as a storage company."