Cisco Plans Big Push Into Server Market

Cisco Plans Big Push Into Server Market

Within the next few months, Cisco Systems, the largest maker of network equipment, plans to release a product that threatens to shake up the technology industry and put the company on a collision course with traditional partners like Hewlett-Packard and IBM.



The product, a server computer equipped with sophisticated virtualization software, is a bold but risky move by Cisco into an unfamiliar, intensely competitive market that typically produces far lower profits than Cisco makes from network gear.

For years, Cisco remained content to sell the switches and routers that direct the rivers of data flowing between computing systems. The technology driver behind this transition, according to Cisco, is virtualization software.