Grid Meter » #5 of "6 Grid vendors to watch in '06" - Cisco Systems

January 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)

#5 of "6 Grid vendors to watch in '06" - Cisco Systems

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Distributed resources depend on a network. And not just any network, but one that can bridge architectures and protocols seamlessly. The bridge on the Cisco logo is not coincidental; the company's first products were indeed a network bridge between disparate systems. A service their hardware provides to this day. (for trivia buffs: since Cisco is HQ'd in San Jose, most people don't connect the dots that 'Cisco' is short for San Francisco - and their logo is based on the Golden Gate bridge)

One could also argue that the general purpose protocol of TCP-IP wouldn't be what it is today without the physical implementations of it manifested in Cisco hardware.

Useful qualities of experience - which is vital to Grid - implies a level of reliability and simplicity. While Cisco does indeed make hardware that is quite complex and requires a great deal of know-how to configure and operate -- my experience has been (and I've worked with some obscure Cisco hardware) that it always seems to work as one would expect it to. And with Cisco's purchase of Linksys and subsequent guidance of that product line, Cisco hardware is nearly as household an item as a toaster.

As previously noted in this blog, Bob Aiken -- Director of Academic Research and Technology Initiatives at Cisco -- noted that we're seeing a "blurring of the boundaries between operating systems, networks and middleware." And about a month ago, Network World's management beat journalists Denise Dubie and Phil Hochmuth broke the news that Cisco is announcing new 'application aware' management products, which would allow customers to "monitor and measure application performance on a network."

Cisco's truly does put the "intelligence in the network", and the convergence of virtualization, loosely-coupled services, systems management and dynamic provisioning capabilities is changing the role of the network from the mere transport of IP packets to central nervous system for the IT infrastructure. With Cisco's "Application-Oriented Networking" product line and an active "Server Networking and Virtualization" group I predict we will see "Grid" and "Cisco" mentioned in the same sentence with greater frequency in 2006.

Posted by Greg Nawrocki on January 12, 2006 08:02 AM

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