Cisco Prepping for Next-Generation Data Centers - Unification: A Gradual Evolution
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The path to a wholly unified network will be gradual, Middleton
says, so while Cisco forges ahead, he’s focused for now on helping
customers design and build networks that are smarter, faster and more
efficient.
John Growdon, director of Cisco’s Go to Market Technology, Worldwide
Channels group at Cisco, says easing customers into a unified strategy
will help them achieve growth and efficiency now, and also help prepare
them and Cisco’s solution providers for new technology enhancements
still to come.
“We do want partners to be able to deliver these high-end
technologies all at once, so they don’t have to go out and do them
piecemeal,” Growdon says, but there is a fine line to walk between
helping foster growth and advocating a costly ‘rip-and-replace’
mentality.
Gourlay says Cisco solution providers who can help customers extend
the lifecycle of their networking and data center infrastructure
benefit now by helping customers consolidate, cut infrastructure,
energy and management costs. Partners are also helping plant the seeds
of innovation by preparing customers for the time when they do have to
make significant upgrades to their infrastructure.
“It’s about buying [customers] enough time with the infrastructure they
already have as well as preparing them and the solution providers that
service them for enterprise class networking, data center and cloud
computing services on those infrastructure investments,” says Gourlay.
The data center is a key area where solution providers can do both,
says Gourlay, since the data center is hardly ever seen as a
discretionary expense, even in today’s economy.
“Data centers are a $200 million black hole of cash–they are not
cheap, there’s a huge initial expense of frontloaded capital that’s
expected to last 10 to 15 years,” Gourlay says. The reality, however,
is that the IT assets that go inside a data center are rendered
obsolete about every five years, putting companies in a bind.
“Every five years, that $200 million building you built is unusable,
or at least not usable in the capacity you need it to be,” says
Gourlay.
By leveraging consolidation and virtualization, Growdon says
solution providers can deliver 30 percent more compute power from
servers while reducing end user’s power expenditures, infrastructure
and other physical costs. These kinds of efficiencies can help solution
providers and customers drive new business opportunities now and pave
the way for future investments, he says.
This pragmatic approach to these technologies doesn’t disrupt
customers’ existing business and also helps to create efficiencies and
savings and to drive new business, he says.
“Rip-and-replace isn’t the way to go – but in areas where customers
are looking at growth opportunities and making new infrastructure
investments anyway, here’s how partners can help them achieve that by
implementing new technologies,” says Gourlay.
