DATA CENTER DERBY HEATS UP

摘要

Network thoroughbred Cisco jumps into the blade server market. Server stallion HP adds security blades to its ProCurve switches. IBM teams up with Brocade. Oracle buys Sun.And everybody courts that prize filly VMware.rnIn this era of server consolidation and vir-tualization, green initiatives and cloud computing, the data center is in flux and all the major vendors are jockeying for position, galloping in with new products, strategies and alliances.rn"What you see right now is everybody shoring up and getting as many offerings as they can to provide all the hardware in the data center," says Mitchell Ashley, principal consultant with Converging Networks and a Network World blogger. Cisco, for example, wants to make it so you can be a complete Cisco shop, including all your servers."rnCisco's blade servers are part of its data center platform, called the Unified Computing System (UCS), which includes storage, network and virtualization resources. Cisco's platform includes VMware's vSphere technology and partnerships with BMC Software, EMC, Intel, Microsoft and Oracle.