5 Energy Trends Driving Your Data Center Like it or not, energy is the yardstick by which data centers are now measured-and many are coming up short. Could Cisco and BMC become more than partners? As Cisco makes an aggressive play for data center market share with its California blade server, industry watchers speculate whether the vendor might also consider acquiring one of the big four management software makers to strike a potentially bigger blow to competitors HP and IBM. Cisco busts out beyond blade servers with Unified Computing System It’s not a blade server – it’s an architecture. Cisco says it considered HP, IBM for blade server Cisco considered HP and IBM as blade server partners for its new Unified Computing System, which is designed as a single architecture for data center computing, storage, networking and virtualization. Cisco marketing vice president David Lawler said the company "did have conversations" with HP and IBM about multiple technologies, like unified fabric and the Nexus 1000V virtual switch, which is believed to be an element within UCS. Cisco UCS: it's an architecture, stupid! It's not a blade server - it's an architecture. Cisco stressed the holistic approach of its Unified Computing System during its launch today, claiming its innovations in tying together servers, storage, networking a virtualization make it unique in the industry. Cisco's big blade splash: Ripples go far and wide Today, Cisco ended the suspense and launched its entry into the data center blade computing market, with the announcement of the Unified Computing System (UCS). Ok, there was really very little suspense, since this had been leaking out in various circles for months. But what was surprising was the breadth and depth of the Cisco launch. Cisco never enters a new market in a small way, and this was no exception. They lined up support from big players across the board – EMC, Microsoft, VMware, Accenture, Intel, Oracle, SAP, and most importantly (from a management perspective, which is my favorite drum to beat) with BMC. Cisco's data-center push holds promise, perils Cisco's move into the heart of data centers, expected to be laid out at an event next Monday, holds the promise of easing a big IT headache but may also escalate competition between the company and its partners. Measuring data center efficiency easier said than done The Green Grid's Power Usage Effectiveness metric rates the energy efficiency of data centers. It's catching on, but measurements can be misleading. Rackspace challenges Amazon with new cloud server, storage services Amazon has a new competitor in the cloud computing arena, with Rackspace debuting pay-as-you-go server instances and an online storage service. 8 Gadgets to Green Your Office Eight products that reduce power usage and green your office. Company turns bad airflow into good cash flow, green IT For Wade Lowder, paying attention to which way the wind blows has had an enormous effect on his green IT initiative. IBM ups the ante with Power virtualization Virtualization is one of the hottest buzzwords in IT today, but all the big news seems to revolve around x86-based systems and the companies that are virtualizing them, such as VMware, Citrix and Microsoft. Enter for a Microsoft training giveaway from New Horizons New Horizons Computer Training is offering a free Microsoft training course worth up to $2,500 to be given to one lucky Microsoft Subnet reader. Deadline for entry is March 31. Network World on Twitter Get our tweets and stay plugged in to networking news. |
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