Cisco, EMC to sell gear to data centers: They call it a “vBlock” (Ugh)

First of all: They should have chosen some other name, this whole vThing has gone too far. Maybe they could have chosen Compute VDC/ Mobile VDC/ CloudPack or whatever. Secondly: It really is no big deal. Nothing new here since that 20% market which data centers are supposed to be the prime consumers and probably as we proceed and as Google and Amazon kick everyone’s asses –yes this is going to happen by 2012 already, mark my words — many service companies [read the ones who own those dinosaur DCs] will have to face the decision of the following:

• Do I have to buy gears such as vBlock or simply talk to Google/Amazon - Cheapest folks around the block (take a look at the dirt-cheap deal LA Council made for $7.5M to do their 30K workplaces!)

• Do I have to negotiate the costs and get stuck in the vendor lock or simply let some third party handle all that?

more questions like these are rising in the heads of many DC owners, builders and even those who are running these in their own houses. Last three weeks I have been doing some intensive traveling around APAC and Middle-East and the sentiment is this:

• Open Source and commodity gear: Govts are fully suporting the use of open source (what chance does VMware has against that?)

• No proprietary gear please: There is also a general sentiment in mainland China that proprietary software may have “stuff embedded in it” and they don’t want to be dependent on U.S companies in the wake of some imminent information warfare. I have also understood that many other APAC countries have the same view on “proprietary gear - hardware of software”. This is actually very disturbing for all those joint ventures since they just won’t be allowed to get in such shops. I have some closer conversations with Gov. Officials in many of those countries and see this also being professed to the private/commercial sector as well. This means bad news for many big players (IBM, HP especially) who have always been able to move in in those markets before anyone else.

• Green is in…Really: Many ME and APAC sectors are becoming cost and environment conscious, really they are far more serious about it than our western counterparts and want to reuse as much as they can. So there is not much of the new gear coming in there. Atleast not in big bulks as one would want to sell.

• Trust: There is also some sort of loss of trust with the economic downturn and much of those scandals that is making customers cringe and hold back to their wallets. “Who do I trust?” is the big question in everyone’s head right now.

So there are many reasons for me, my customers and many close CxO friends across the planet, to really treat this as a yawner since new hardware and software to me is useless if it doesn’t show “immediate” impact on my bottom line as my profitability does get hit when I go for new gear. My business dilemma is not being solved directly as I still need expensive projects to realize the gluing and tying the software knots to my business applications. This is my own challenge and no one is solving this for me. This is the general sentiment across the executives and business leaders I speak to across the planet on a daily basis.

What obviously is very interesting to see is definitely this:

• If I am an existing Cisco/EMC/VMW customer, how does it help me reduce costs when I buy this vBlock?

• For new customers who are choosing the Cisco/EMC/VMW combination should evaluate the purchase block of buying all that separately and compare to this vBlock. It has got to be cheap, I guess. It is also possible to make deals against three parties separately and get a much cheaper deal that bulking all your cash in this vBlock.

It all depends on what “payment scheme” existing and interested” customers would want to employ when talking to the vBlock folks. I am not sure how the customers who are not exposed to these deals will receive this. But we’ll leave that to the marketing folks, they can generally much gifted in getting new customers swiftly. Reuter was carrying this news today.

Disclaimer: I may be playing a crucial/decision-maker role in helping a large customer build a brand new, high-density twin Data Center somewhere on the planet.

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