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Cisco buys Whiptail continuing the SSD storage I/O flash cash cache dash

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Storage I/O trends

Cisco buys Whiptail continuing the Storage storage I/O flash cash cache dash

Congratulations to Virident for being bought today for $645  Million USDby Western Digital (WD). Virident a nand flash PCIe card startup  vendor has been around for several years and in the last year or two has gain  more industry awareness as a competitor to FusionIO among others.

 

There is a nand flash solid  state devices (SSD)  cash-dash occurring, not to mention fast cache dances that is occurring the IT  and data infrastructure (e.g. storage and IO) sector specifically.

 

Why the nand flash SSD cash dash and cache dance?

Yesterday hard disk drive (HDD) vendor Western Digital  (WD) bought Virident a nand flash PCIe Solid State Device (SSD) card vendor for $650M,  and today networking and server vendor Cisco bought Whiptail a SSD based  storage system startup for a little over $400M. Here is an industry trends perspective post that I did yesterday on WD and Virident.

 

Obviously this begs a couple of questions, some of which  I raised in my post yesterday about WD, Virident, Seagate, FusionIO and  others.

Questions include

Does this mean Cisco is getting ready to take on EMC, NetApp,  HDS and its other storage partners who leverage the Cisco UCS server?

IMHO at  least near term no more than they have in the past, nor any more than EMCs  partnership with Lenovo indicates a shift in what is done with vBlocks. On the  other hand, some partners or customers may be as nervous as a long-tailed cat  next to a rocking chair (Google it if you don’t know what it means ;).

 

 

Is Cisco going to continue to offer Whiptail SSD storage  solutions on a standalone basis, or pull them in as part of solutions similar  to what it has done on other acquisitions?

 

Storage I/O trends

 

IMHO  this is one of the most  fundamental questions and despite the press release and statements about this  being a UCS focus, a clear sign of proof for Cisco is how they reign in (if  they go that route) Whiptail from being sold as a general storage solution  (with SSD) as opposed to being part of a solution bundle.

 

How will Cisco manage its relationship in a coopitition  manner cooperating with the likes of EMC in the joint VCEinitiative along with  FlexPod partner NetApp among others? Again time will tell.

 

Also while most of the discussions about NetApp have been around the UCS based FlexPod business, there is  the other side of the discussion which is what about NetApp E Series storage  including the SSD based EF540that competes with Whiptail (among others).

 

Many people may not realize how much DAS storage  including fast SAS, high-capacity SAS and SATA or PCIe SSD cards Cisco sells as  part of UCS solutions that are not vBlock, FlexPod or other partner systems.

 

NetApp and Cisco have partnerships that go beyond the FlexPod (UCS and ONTAP  based FAS) so will be interesting to see what happens in that space (if  anything). This is where Cisco and their UCS acquiring Whiptail is not that  different from IBM buying TMS to complement their servers (and storage) while also partnering with other suppliers, same  holds true for server vendors Dell, HP, IBM and Oracle among others.

 

Can Cisco articulate and convince their partners,  customers, prospects and others that the whiptail acquisition is more about  direct attached storage (DAS) which includes both internal dedicated and external  shared device?

Keep in mind that DAS does not have to mean  Dumb A$$ Storageas some might have you believe.

 

Then there are the more popular questions of who is going  to get bought next, what will NetApp, Dell, Seagate, Huawei and a few others  do?

 

Oh, btw, funny how have not seen any of the pubs mention that Whiptail CEO Dan Crain is a former Brocadian (e.g. former Brocade CTO) who happens to be a Cisco competitor, just saying.

 

Congratulations to Dan and his crew and enjoy life at Cisco.

 

Stay tuned as the fall 2013 nand flash SSD cache dash and  cash dance activities are well underway.

 

Ok, nuff said (for now).

Cheers  Gs


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