If you’ve been reading this blog over the past six months, you’ll know that I’ve continued to bust on Cisco for not providing market share numbers after selling their UCS product line for two years. I believe the wait is now over.
I’m hearing rumours that this next week (May 23 – 27, 2011) we should finally be seeing Cisco’s UCS market share numbers. From what I’m hearing, the numbers are going to be very positive for Cisco. To be perfectly clear, I have not heard of any official market share numbers, but I know that IDC should be releasing their Q1 2011 Blade Market Share numbers next week so if the rumours are right, we’ll see Cisco on their chart. I’ve heard from an unofficial source that Cisco sold about ~17,000 blade servers in Q1, 2011. If this turns out to be true, I am not sure that Cisco UCS will be in the #3 blade server spot as Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers, commented in a Cisco Financial Analyst Conference in Q4 of 2010: http://blogs.cisco.com/ar/john_chambers_discusses_ucs_market_share__wow/
Since I’m not an analyst, I can only wait until next week when “hopefully” the curtain will be lifted and we’ll finally get to see what the true story is behind Cisco UCS’ market share.
Stay tuned…
It will be interesting to see revenue numbers, not just body count. My sources say many enclosures were sold at substantial discount, bundled with other products, or perpetual “loaners” versus a PO issued at at competitive price point.
And given that Cisco sold millions of Flips and killed the line, who’s to say the same won’t happen here? But then I am making a facetious comparison.
Sure…HP has been spreading that FUD everywhere they go. Everytime I hear it I know they’ve been there. The “substantial” discount is because server pricing does not work the same way network gear does…so the discounts are not comparable. I assure you that these fictitious low margins and killing UCS are just not true.
Flip died because of a change in market dynamics (the need for low cost cameras) and that Cisco is getting dinged for being in the consumer market. UCS has been doing better than any new cisco product to date and is in line with our core business.
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Chris,
agree UCS is growing quickly from a small base, but if these numbers are true, it will be interesting to see how literally to take Mr. Chambers’ comments about “…any market segment that cisco cannot be #1 or #2 will see cuts…”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/11/cisco_q3_f2011_numbers/
if these numbers are in the ballpark, cisco will be a distant #4 in x86 blades and barely in the top 10 (orders of magnitude behind the top 5) for x86 servers overall.
according to Jesse Freund’s infamous post on these pages last year, we are to read Mr. Chambers extremely literally (although they will be found to have come up quite a bit short of the mark)
https://bladesmadesimple.com/2010/10/cisco-marketshare/
any news ?
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