Cisco Extends and Expands the Nexus

| Jan 29, 2009 | Enterprise Network Systems | Competitive Intelligence Report

| Analyst: Bill Terrill

Current Perspective: Positive
Vendor Importance: Moderate
Market Impact: Moderate

Event Summary

January 27, 2009 -- Cisco introduced the Nexus 7018 and 5010 switches and 2000 Series Fabric Extender as well as enhancements to its Catalyst products. With the Nexus platform, IT organizations can take advantage of unified fabric and optimize for architectural changes such as virtualization, Web 2.0 applications, and cloud computing. These new technologies are at the foundation of Cisco's Data Center 3.0 vision to deliver a unified fabric and unified computing for next generation data centers.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on the Cisco announcement of Nexus and Catalyst 6500 enhancements because these add more density and functionality to this growing line of switches which are becoming the core products of Cisco’s Data Center 3.0 focus. The additions increase port density for both the Nexus 7000 and Nexus 5000 switches and provide needed integration between the Catalyst 6500 and the Nexus 5000.

• Vendor Importance: Moderate to Cisco because these announcements follow-on to the 2008 introduction of this product line and further define Cisco’s data center direction. Excellent enhancements have been made that advance Cisco’s Data Center 3.0 vision but do not yet fill out the complete product requirements. The Data Center 3.0 vision is still undergoing development and more product features are required to complete the structure on which that vision is to be built.

• Market Impact: Moderate on the enterprise high capacity switch-router market because these improvements, while a good step for Cisco and the young, Nexus product family, are not unexpected. Competitors will not be surprised by these introductions nor will these updates change the overall competitive landscape. The market for the data center “fabric” has been defined and it is now a game of which vendor releases what product on what schedule, with Cisco taking an early lead.

Recommended Competitor Actions

• Woven and Arista, as focused 10 Gigabit high performance computing competitors, should focus on the core functionality of their products as switches for these environments. With the Nexus performance at levels close to or surpassing the current competitive products, these vendors must show their commitment and capabilities in this area.

• Other competitors with a data center focus, such as Juniper, Brocade (via the Foundry acquisition), Extreme and Alcatel-Lucent must offer their own alternatives to the Cisco initiatives. For many enterprises the Nexus solution will currently be over-kill in terms of performance. The competitors should show how their solutions are more effective over a five year time-frame compared to moving to the high-end Nexus.

• All competitors should point out that the Nexus is still a work in progress as evidenced by the necessity of using Catalyst 6500’s to support basic data center functions such as security and application acceleration. The more integrated features of competitive high-end solutions should be highlighted.

• While many believe that the new NX-OS is a long overdue replacement for Cisco’s IOS, competitors should use this new OS as an issue with the Cisco solution. Pointing out that migrating to Nexus will now mandate support of two different switch operating systems with the attendant maintenance and support issues should be high on the list of competitor sales issues. The migration from IOS can be used to show that Cisco is only now catching up with competitive OS’s such as Jupiter’s JUNOS.

CLIENTS ONLY

Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

Recommended Vendor Actions

Recommended End User / Customer Actions

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