Cisco boosts its storage capabilities with the $415 million acquisition of Whiptail, developer of the ACCELLA, INVICTA and WT-1100 enterprise all-flash storage arrays.
"Whiptail will strengthen Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS) strategy and enhance application performance by integrating scalable solid state memory into the UCS's fabric computing architecture," Cisco CEO John Chamber says.
Some believe the acquisition threatens the partnerships Cisco currently has with EMC, NetApp, VCE and Hitachi Data Systems-- but the company insists the buy is less about storage and more about the integration of Whiptail technology (such as data acceleration) with UCS at the hardware and manageability level to create a unified provisioning and administration management offering.
In other words, it appears Cisco will not mess with its hardware partners... at least as yet. Instead the company will rival the likes of HP, IBM and Dell, all companies with in-house enteprise all-flash divisions.
Following the customary approval processes Cisco will integrate Whiptail into the Computing Systems Product Group under VP Paul Perez, and will continue supporting existing Whiptail customers.