The VMware, Cisco, and EMC Coalition for the Advancement of Monetary Monopolization that was announced this week caused quite a buzz.  After of few days of thought, here’s some things to consider, in no specific order.

1. The normal industry reaction to a “super band” announcement “lifecycle” goes like this: denial that it matters, statements that it eliminates choice and that is bad, FUD that they will play nice together and customers will get caught in the middle, comparisons of monopolistic past practices, and finally inevitably ending up in some kind of Orwellian/Nazi occupation/cold war Soviet Union analogy (among the more pessimistic types).  The empire is under siege!
2. The reality is that this is good – mostly for VC&E, but also good in general.  There is a market segment that wants these guys to dance together.  It’s at the very high-end and it’s a very enviable segment.  Saying it isn’t real is silly – it is, and it’s exactly why these three have become BFFs.  Do they want total world domination?  Of course.  Do they think this move will bring it to them in one fell swoop?  Of course not.  Love em or hate em, these are serious companies that are enormously well positioned and well run.
3. The world of IT works like this:  When big guys do something, smaller guys follow.  That’s why this is good for all.  VCE will get the big guys to adopt virtualization more ubiquitously sooner rather than later – which will trickle down to the rest of the market – all the way to the SOHO – sooner or later.  When that happens, transactions occur, and we all get a chance to sell stuff.  How can that be bad?
4. HP was first to respond – but they did it in typical HP fashion.  Here’s my example (marketing), with no disrespect to my pals at HP:
   1. VCE: “Announcing VCE – look at this incredibly attractive naked woman!!!”
   2. HP: “We have converged stuff too.  Notice the dress on the floor.  It was made from materials HP invented.  It was manufactured using HP’s patented technology that enables cloth fabrics to hermetically seal with polymers (coincidentally developed at HP Labs for NASA in 1974) able to withstand a drop from 87 meters…….You get my point.   I’d rather look at the naked lady.  VCE sold sex.  HP sold burn cream.  You don’t believe me?  Look at the Twittisphere during the VCE announcement, and watch the same community during HP’s:  zzzzzzzzzzzzz
5. The big guys will scramble to get their “unified” stories out – but they don’t need to.  99% of the stuff sold into this market will remain best of breed “piece parts.”    There is a reason VMware/Maritz were quiet – they have zero desire to poke their biggest channels in the eye (HP/IBM).
6. The formation of the evil axis will scramble partnership responses, however, and of course Brocade sits in the middle.  They just became even more attractive to the rest of the ecosystem.  I would way rather be lucky than good.  Others who look to gain from this?  Juniper and F5.
7. Emulex must be tickled pink.  They have been yapping about convergence for a while – and now they just got a huge boost in nomenclature association that can only help their cause.
8. If they are smart and can focus (they have more ADD than me), Verari has had a platform that has been custom built, best-of-breed for this movement.  The highest density, smartest server/storage packaging on the planet, IMHO.
9. Other blade guys are going to come to light – Fujitsu, HDS, etc. suddenly have Cisco to thank for making it more than a two-man game (HP and IBM).
10. Watch the next cool virtualization things start to appear – memory virtualization.  Being able to seamlessly use main memory in “other” physical machines will enable workloads to become truly virtual – and that has huge repercussions.  You won’t need 1TB of main memory in one box necessarily.
11. Having said that, look at what Fusion I/O and the crowd of next-gen SSD/Flash heads have – this VCE gig opens up a lot of possibilities.

So, in conclusion, lets give them credit where credit is due.  Every one of you would have done the same thing if you were allowed.  It was brilliant, and there isn’t anything we can do about it other than draft off of the momentum it drives – which could be huge.

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Tags: Cisco, EMC, VCE, VMware