Earth to HP: Cisco's UCS is being sold here

Data center SVP McCool responds to "Planet Zircon" remark

Cisco has responded to assertions that it's selling its Unified Computing System on planets other than our familiar home, Planet Earth. As you recall, HP CEO Leo Aptoheker said HP never sees UCS in competitive data center bids despite Cisco's assertions that sales of UCS grew 700% year-over-year in its second fiscal quarter.

Apotheker said of UCS:

We hardly ever see them. They must be selling on planet Zircon.

Well, Leo and HP better take a closer look right here on Planet Earth, says Cisco Senior Vice President John McCool. Cisco has 4,000 Earthling customers for UCS, which is on an annual run rate of $650 million, McCool blogged on the Cisco website:

I wanted to dispel a recent rumor in the marketplace that Cisco has gone (warp drives engaged, presumably) to a place called "Planet Zircon" to sell its industry-first and industry-leading Unified Computing System. Leaving aside for a moment that some of our competitors seem to be living in an alternate universe, UCS is actually selling quite well right here on planet Earth.

McCool says customers, competitors and other Cisco observers may have thought the company went too boldly where a router company has never gone before when it introduced UCS two years ago. Indeed, many were skeptical, as we chronicled.

Cisco this week even added a few new servers to the UCS arsenal, along with a raft of other new data center goodies, including the expected Nexus 3000. Cisco also stretched its unified fabric from the top-of-rack switch into the server NIC and out to the core Ethernet and SAN switches.

Still to come though, we are told, is the "Jawbreaker" fabric line and the role it plays - or doesn't play - with existing Nexus and FabricPath offerings.

But back to servers. If Cisco's numbers are accurate, UCS seems to be taking hold terrestrially, and perhaps on Planet Zircon as well. Our suspicion is, HP might not see them because UCS is most likely going into greenfields instead of HP and IBM server entrenchments. But with 4,000 customers and a run rate of $650 million, maybe it's HP and Apotheker who need to come back to Earth.