Beijing on February 20 afternoon, according to foreign media reports, analysts said Friday, although between Cisco and Hewlett-Packard will launch a competition, but the two companies is unlikely to end the relationship, forcing the two sides shared users choose only one of the company's products.
The Break
Cisco Systems Thursday announced that the company's systems integration contract with Hewlett-Packard this year, expired April 30, will no longer be renewed. This indicates that HP will no longer be Cisco's "certified channel partners" (Certified Channel Partner) or the "Global Services Alliance Partner" (Global Service Alliance partner). Cisco senior vice president of Worldwide Channels Keith Goodwin (Keith Goodwin) in the conference call that the company's relationship with Hewlett-Packard has become the competition from the co-operation, it should not continue to share with the HP product road map and other information.
HP this week, just four said it would expand the contract with QLogic's storage switch. HP had been as Cisco distributor of such products, so this event also indicates that the cooperation between the two sides about to burst. In addition, Cisco said earlier this week, will stop Nexus 4001d blade switch development, the product with the Dell blade chassis M1000e match. But Cisco declined to comment on unannounced products, and that Dell is still the company's merchandise distributor.
Already signs
In fact, the relationship between Cisco and Hewlett-Packard over the past few years, there have been signs of rupture, Cisco issued a statement Thursday that the incident is officially only. In the past, HP, Cisco distribution network in many high-end enterprise products, while Cisco is using HP's computing platform, and some products as network infrastructure equipment. Both sides focus on their respective fields, although Hewlett-Packard's ProCurve sector through the sale of network equipment, but the main focus on small and medium business.
However, with the growing size of data centers and the rising complexity, in particular the implementation of virtualization technology, making large-scale IT companies are trying to produce a full range of products such facilities. Analysts said this trend Cisco and HP are the two most active firms, in addition to including IBM, Oracle and Dell. Cisco early as a year ago, with the UCS (Unified Computing System) blade server platform shocked the industry, and to enter a new field. Perhaps it was since then, the conflict between HP and Cisco will start the upgrade.
Market research firm Current Analysis analyst Shidifushu Charter (Steve Schuchart) said: "When Cisco began selling server, HP began to suppress the Cisco network equipment. It also symbolizes the end of the relationship."
Compete
Schuchat said, HP is not just Cisco's competitors, and even Cisco has become the biggest enemy. HP is expected to be completed this year on the acquisition of 3Com, and to introduce routers and switches, which have the same with the Cisco product line. According to market research firm Dell'Oro Group data, the Ethernet switch market, Cisco is the largest vendor share of up to two thirds; and Hewlett-Packard and 3Com separated second and third, the sum of the market share of 10.3%.
UBS analyst 尼克斯西奥 多索普罗斯 (Nikos Theodosopoulos) that HP and Cisco are likely to continue to strengthen through the acquisition of its own strength. Investment Report, he wrote: "We expect the competition between Cisco and HP will increase the next few years." He said the two companies may use the active win users of financial transactions.
Market research firm Ovum believes that HP is actively grabbing as Cisco's market share, so the relationship breakdown greater impact on HP. The company said: "After the acquisition of 3Com also need some time to fully integrated, so HP HP Cisco by Laibisike reliance on more."
Competing users
But analysts believe that Cisco and HP are smart, will not hurt competition between them to the user. Schuchat said: "Users are not forced to choose one of the products." But he also said that HP and Cisco may be on this consultation with users.
Market research firm Illuminata principal analyst Gedenghafu (Gordon Haff) that the two companies may be "strongly encouraged" users to use their own equipment. He also said that in many cases, these incentives will be financial incentives, to start.
Cisco said that HP will offer Cisco's customer service contract, and signed a new agreement with HP to better reflect the new relationship between the two companies. Goodwin said in a telephone conference: "As long as our users need, but also beneficial to our business, we will continue to cooperate with HP."
Cisco spokesman said Cisco to OEM (original equipment manufacturer) as established distribution agreements with Hewlett-Packard will not be affected.
Industry trends
Analysts believe that the reason why the relationship between Cisco and HP break is because the integration of enterprise IT equipment manufacturers, this trend will have all the major IT equipment manufacturers and user-generated effects, but these effects are not all negative. Harvard said, IT industry is moving from mainframe and mini computers completely closed to the PC and the Ethernet architecture is more decentralized and open architecture development. He said that over the past few years, the standard parts production and price cuts have been made to benefit corporate IT departments, but the integration of these components into the overall system is more and more difficult.
HARP that with Cisco, HP, IBM, Oracle and Dell IT vendors increasingly involved in all aspects of the data center, this complexity will be reduced. For some third-party systems integrators, this is a bad news. But this does not mean that businesses no longer need to have certain strengths of IT systems, businesses can still demand their own autonomous formation system. Hafer said: "We are not in the back."