Network World
March 18, 2009
"Cisco Rivals Size Up UCS with Usual Reaction: Caveat Emptor"
By Jim Duffy
Rahul Singh offers analysis on Cisco's new unified data center platform and its impact on the marketplace. "...Pace Harmon is not a rival but an advisor to Cisco customers. Principal Rahul Singh says he had input into the launch of UCS and suggested to Cisco that it partner for the system's blade server component. "This is not something that Cisco's done in the past -- trying to get into an already crowded market and displace vendors that people already have a significant amount of investment in and experience with," Singh says. "It doesn't make sense but folks at Cisco are used to selling hardware and boxes so it's almost a logical extension." Singh says UCS, especially on the management side, will have to open up some more and "learn to play with the other players" in the data center. He also says the platform has the potential to disrupt an enterprises IT organizational structure. "Clients have been inquiring about it: How does this affect things organizationally? How do you operationalize this?" he asks. "It throws a kink into that because everything is managed and allocated on demand. What does this do to the organization and should we be doing something different along those lines?"
Pace Harmon’s insights regarding technology trends, complex transactions, and supplier management issues are frequently quoted in leading industry journals.
