A recent article by SearchDataCenter.com titled Top Ten Data Center Trends of 2011, predicts that Cisco UCS blade servers will grab mega market share and inspires more converged infrastructure products.

According to the SearchDataCenter.com article, “These [Cisco] machines can put up impressive performance numbers, and make vendor management simpler, but analysts and IT managers remain wary of vendor lock-in. Cisco has the most to gain in this new market for converged hardware platforms, with installations in nearly every data center around the world.” 

It is interesting to see outside sources waging on the success of Cisco’s UCS platform.  I’ve followed the Cisco UCS offering since the beginning – even before some Cisco field reps knew about it.  Up until recently I have considered the Cisco UCS platform as ideal for virtualization where 8 or more ESX / vSphere hosts are needed.  Why?  The platform appears to be designed for large scale growth – something most SMB (small medium business) data centers don’t need.  However a recent meeting with M. Sean McGee (http://www.mseanmcgee.com/) helped me see that UCS could be a good fit for the SMB market.  If Cisco wants to be in “nearly every data center around the world” as the SearchDataCenter.com article states, Cisco is going to need to find a way to reach beyond their Enterprise customers to the SMB market.  Everyone knows the brand “CISCO” but how many non-Enterprise customers knows the brand “UCS”?

I hope that Cisco does increase their market share.  They have a really unique product offering and I think their design could bring a lot to the blade server market in the upcoming years.  Good luck, Cisco.  Let the race begin!

For details on Cisco’s UCS offering, visit https://bladesmadesimple.com/cisco/

For the full SearchDataCenter.com article, please visit: http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/news/2240030708/Top-ten-data-center-trends-of-2011