Facebook's Open Compute network is limited, Cisco says

July 21, 2013

Facebook's Open Compute project, which is working on open source servers and switches, will be limited by "weaknesses" in scope that Cisco can exploit, CEO John Chambers said this week. In an exclusive interview with Network World when he also touched on the consumer market and EMC alliance, Chambers said efforts like Facebook's to commoditize and wring cost out of hardware purchases will open up opportunities for Cisco to provide solutions that are better tailored to specific customer needs. "I think this will just be one more series of good challenges that Cisco will say 'what's the business objective on,'" Chambers said of Open Compute. "There are a lot of weaknesses to the area -- we're going to go back and solve customer problems. If you're standalone anything, this is going to be a hard market to play in. Anything white label, where the decision is cost or opex, you're going to lose." What Cisco will not do is sit around and let Open Compute proponents and supporters guide the discussion on commodity switches and servers. Cisco's messaging will be proactive instead of reactive this time. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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