More Fuel To Put On The Data Center Fire. . .

December 17, 2008 on 11:15 am | By Peder | In Main | No Comments

Competition is an incredible driver of innovation and strong newcomers to any market often have the ability to act and move quickly.  In the Internet age and more importantly modern era of content being king, the cracks in the network have collided the computing at the edge world with the dumb network yielding this open landscape of an Intelligent Internet.  We will see it in many forms from Cloud Computing (http://www.ibm.com/news/us/en/2008/09/24/h700006x16255w91.html) to Intelligent Content Based Routing in the network (http://www.crn.com/networking/207000296) to next generation data center initiatives with grand and glorious names.  The simple fact is that the data center is no longer and end point but is moving to a central role in the network.  At the same time, the network must be more capable of performing new tasks with the flexibility to change quickly.  In a world of purpose built devices, this sounds a lot like software.  So much so that recent blogs hinted of Cisco thinking of offering blade servers in packaging similar to the Nexus systems (http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/091508-cisco-blade-server.html).

To be fair, I must admit that I am quite biased to believe that the open blade server platforms will engulf routing and switching as delivering services and solutions within the network become a core offering.  With the enterprise economics and volume, data center economonics will win out in the end just like the PC beat down the mainframes and mid-ranges.  While we have had a few friends whom have helped us greatly along the way (http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/info/bladecenter/pn41/index.html), we are just at the beginning of the battle.  For those of us in the networking industry, adding more processing ability deeper into the network isn’t new or rocket science, but developing new services in compelling and manageable ways while ensuring the robustness and scalability of the network is true heavy lifting.  Where the market turns in the end is up for grabs, but the chance to watch first hand for all of us is going to be a great ride.