Jan 21 2009
Is Cisco the new Apple?
Not from a design perspective, but from an end to end solution perspective.
Lost of noise today around Cisco entering the server market, some here and here.
Just as Apple loves to own the end to end experience by making specific hardware to fit their design needs while powering their software they pride themselves on writing and bundling with their devices.
This approach is a tough one, but very fruitful if you can pull it off. By entering the server market Cisco moves closer to owning the end to end “experience” of data, services and applications moving around the worlds pipes and datacenters.
Cisco dominates the high end router/switch market. By optimizing their network gear to run extra efficient with their server gear that is a pretty nice value proposition for groups looking for plug-and-play capabilities. You basically end up with a bunch of hubs and pipes that move the data and apps around to virtualized containers sitting in the servers/nodes.
My big question is how will all of this fit into their living room strategy?