Cisco's made some moves in the SAN space recently, with the idea of
becoming a stronger player in the storage networking world.
Namely, the company has announced the ability to do routing between
physical as well as virtual SANs (VSANs) with its MDS 9000 family of
switches and directors. Called Inter-VSAN Routing, the software will
allow servers in different VSANs to share common storage resources -
including disk and tape libraries - that can be either local or remote.
This helps strengthen the ROI of a SAN, if indeed it can truly share
resources without additional switches being needed.
Another new feature is support for Fibre Channel, Ficon and other
protocols that allow mainframes to be brought into the management mix.
Most interesting of all is the ability to set bandwidth requirements for
specific applications. This guarantees a certain level of availability
for a customer's most important applications. With so much focus on
service-level agreements these days, this sounds like a winner.
Best of all, these new features are software-only enhancements, coming
via the firm's SAN-OS version 1.3 promised in the next two months. No
new hardware is required.
The goal with all this, naturally, is to kick some Brocade and McData
butt in the storage fabric and director spaces, where Cisco has been
pretty much been seen as a me-too player. These new features just may
cause some folks looking for an enterprise-class SAN to take a closer
look at the MDS 9000.
Cisco's made its name, and its money, in the networking arena, of
course. Its core expertise is in IP networking switches, and it's
already got a strong cadre of Fortune 1000 customers that it's been
building since its inception in 1984. Cisco's wares are already in the
data center, so that helps the sales force because they know who to talk
to and have existing relationships in place. They're not starting from
scratch, and that's important.
Also, the economy seems to be cooperating. Now that IT budgets are
opening up again, there's some room for new SAN-attached applications.
Still, it's going to be an uphill battle. The strongest candidates for
what Cisco has to offer - the Fortune 1000 - mostly already have their
SAN architectures in place. Yes, many customers reassess their
technology - and their suppliers - every three or four years, as the
equipment comes off lease. But the incumbent usually has an edge. So
unless McData or Brocade do something to upset their customer base - or
unless Cisco's MDS family has a significant price/performance advantage
- it's going to be tough sledding. Time will tell, of course.
