I will be honest with you. I have my own concerns about VCE as of late especially since Cisco has been “showing their teeth” . Customers are becoming more educated regarding converged infrastructure and being presented with more options as time is progressing; VCE is not the only cool kid in town. Customers are growing tired of the vendors parroting “Increased competition! Good for customers!” Truth is, it’s not always good for customers. In the real world, most shops buy their IT equipment on a 36 to 48 month cycle. That applies to hardware and software – they expect their software to be supported for the duration, and they buy support contracts accordingly. Usually 36 months at a time.
The Nexus 1000v is a powerful example of why this can be bad for customers. Cisco introduced the 1010 appliance in 2011 – and cancelled any further development on September 14, 2012. Just a smidge over 12 months later. The fact Cisco will continue to support it is absolutely irrelevant – customers expect and deserve software updates. Instead, they bought 24+ months of best effort support. This is for a product that was promoted as a cornerstone of VCE. You can argue that the technology was rolled into the 1100 Cloud Services Platform, however that also requires the purchase of additional hardware and new licenses. It’s a hardware appliance!
This causes distrust between manufactures, VARs and the end customer. Cisco recently purchased Whiptail; all Whiptail does is flash. This was done right on the heels of EMC announcing new VNX family products which are available as all flash. There is a lot of speculation between individuals in the virtual community (Including customers) that either Cisco wants to slowly cut out EMC or doesn’t believe EMC has the chops. Given everything else that’s going on, it’s a reasonable conclusion – either one of them. Especially with Cisco loudly and publicly denouncing NSX in company blogs and through unofficial channels. Then to less than a week later turn around and buy Whiptail?
This goes back to being bad for customers. Because it is now very reasonable for them to doubt the capabilities of EMC’s offerings – after all, Cisco just bought a storage company! Why would they do that unless there was something wrong with the E in VCE? Whether or not there actually is, the question has been raised – by the vendor. What customers are seeing is suddenly Cisco is bashing VMware and buying a company that competes directly with their partner EMC. Not only is it a company that directly competes with their partner, it’s a company that says the way their partner does storage is fundamentally wrong. Now if you’re not seeing that as a shot across the bow or potential breakup of the partnership, you’re not doing your proper due diligence. Especially when you consider that less than a week ago EMC announced the availability of the VNX-F.
Customers are and will be very concerned by this move on Cisco’s part – because like it or not, it does directly affect them if they’re considering VBlock.
Do I think this is going to tear apart VCE or that it’s doomed or such? Hardly. I don’t see any evidence or reason why it would. I can only prove that there is a possibility it will have a negative impact on sales. Not that it is having, has had, or will have. Just that it might. Like it or not, there’s also a very visible risk to customers with regards to the vendor side of things. As it sits, when you buy a VBlock, you’re getting a packaged deal which involves three companies – VMware, Cisco and EMC = VCE. But as it is, Cisco already controls 66% of the hardware, as they dictate the server (UCS) and network element (Nexus/MDS). With the purchase of Whiptail, Cisco now has the ability to exert 100% control over the hardware. Cisco servers, Cisco network, Cisco storage. It also enables Cisco to completely dump MDS as they’ve been trying to for a while now. Customers like the ‘single throat to choke’ approach, till they find out it often means paying a lot closer to list price on everything.
Why wouldn’t Cisco want 100% control of the hardware? Why would they not want to offer a solution which is comprised entirely of their hardware, so they could sell more of it? There’s no reason for them to not do that. They don’t compete in the hypervisor space, so they could just as easily turn VCE into VCC, Hyper-V + CC, Citrix + CC, KVM + CC and still be perfectly content. The only software they’re selling here is the software you have to buy (UCS management elements, Nexus licenses, etcetera) and that’s forced purchase with no alternatives.
The real point is that repeated public spats like this, especially coupled to strategic buys, introduces serious doubts on the part of customers. There are now a lot of very hard questions to ask, in large part because the VCE alliance is clearly less in-step with each other than thought.
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