Cisco and HP have a common goal. They want to be your exclusive infrastructure provider. As a result, Cisco and HP are on a path leading to a major collision in the market (or at least in your IT and procurement departments).

I confess that I'm guilty of turning my head to see wreckage from a car collision on the side of a road—I'm not proud of that mind you—and that part of me is looking forward to seeing HP and Cisco collide. But I also have to ask myself: Who will be caught up in the wreckage? Or more optimistically, who will benefit from the collision?

Hot: The Value of Integration

Cisco and HP will collide at the intersection where compute meets networking and storage. To some extent, the collision is in process; both companies have already run the stop signs at the intersection. HP rolled passed the sign with its BladeSystem Matrix product, and Cisco has been inching into the intersection with its Unified Computing System offering.

Historically, the domains of compute, network, and storage have been procured, installed, and managed separately, with integration happening on the back end of deployment, not the front end of design. HP and Cisco want to change this. They want to provide you with scalable infrastructure solutions that fully integrate compute, network, and storage up-front. You should note that these happen to be the compute, network, and storage technologies of their choice—interoperability isn't a watchword here.

Now if you've got a little gray in your hair, like me, you're no doubt thinking, "This sounds like the mainframe" or "This sounds like the AS/400" (or whatever they're calling it these days). And you're right. These systems clearly demonstrate the high value of having a single "system" that fully integrates all three domains. When you manage a mainframe or an AS/400 (by any name), you don't manage compute, networking, and storage as resources existing in a void. You manage them as highly integrated components in a unified system.

In my mind, this is the right approach—the "hot" approach. Integrating these three traditionally separate domains into a single solution enables a deeper level of functionality and eliminates many of the conflicts and much of the finger pointing that goes on when the domains are implemented and managed separately.

Not Hot: Pride and Prejudice

As noted, I can buy into the technical benefits for providing solutions that integrate compute, network, and storage. But there is no free lunch here—the benefits are offset by challenges. I would argue that three challenges represent potential barriers to adoption.

Wedding-bell blues. HP and Cisco have separate visions for their integrated technology and few (if any) promises of integration with competing technologies. In short, you're making a long-term strategic commitment to one of them if you head down the path. That might be OK if the industry were highly standardized and the future of key technologies such as Data Center Ethernet (DCE), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and InfiniBand were set in stone. . . . which brings me to the second point.

Future shock. Each of these solutions depends on technology that may or may not be mainstream in the midterm (two to three years) future. You could go down one of these paths and very possibly find out that a key technology underpinning didn't make it into the mainstream. Nothing is certain in this industry. There's a degree of gamble that you're heading down a dead-end path and will be forced to rip-and-replace (or at least augment) at a later time.

Dysfunctional families. Integrating compute, network, and storage is great from a technology perspective, but our IT staffs aren't necessarily ready for that level of integration. Most IT staffs operate and manage within each domain, and cross-domain cooperation isn't always what it should be. That means that to fully embrace these integrated solutions requires change in the IT organization—and changing behavior is always much harder than changing technology.

Based on these challenges, I have to say the state of the IT industry is "not hot" with respect to its ability to consume these integrated solutions. Again, I think the technology is heading in the right direction; I just don't think we're all ready to jump aboard the ship.

Sean Chandler is a computer and network consultant with more than 30 years of field experience. Astro, a border collie with more than 40 dog years of data processing experience, provides technical support to his master, Sean.

Astro's Pick of the Litter

My master has been skeptical of the "Flip," a consumer device that purports to be to video recorders what the iPod is to MP3 players. Although far from being a video expert, he has always relied on traditional hand-held cam systems (including the new generation with built-in hard drives). But his view changed when he got his hands on an HD-capable Flip. My master found this gadget incredibly easy to use, easy to carry, easy to integrate with his PC or his Mac, and most important, lots of fun. I'm not suggesting you'll soon see lots of YouTube videos featuring yours truly—but you never know. I'm certainly ready for my close up!

—Astro