Why Cisco UCS is Kind of like the Kindle

I've been reading Cisco's new book on UCS titled: Project California: a Data Center Virtualization Server. The book is exceptional, but the title concerns me. The media and potential UCS customers already struggle with how to categorize UCS. By referring to it as a "server", authors Gai, Salli and Anderson may create further confusion. The term doesn't do justice to the new category that UCS creates – a compute platform unifying network, storage and server virtualization.

While obviously very different types of products, UCS and Amazon's electronic book reader nonetheless have quite a bit in common. The paperback sized Kindle 2 combines innovative display, wireless and low power technologies to provide an optimized hosting platform for electronic books. It eliminates the printing, distribution and storage costs inherent in the old-fashioned paper versions. UCS similarly incorporates innovative technologies in memory, network I/O and unified fabric management to optimize the virtual environment. It facilitates a pervasive operation of agile virtual machines that are much less expensive to deploy and manage than physical servers.

Kindle 2 is still rudimentary in some respects such as lack of a touch screen, but it makes so much sense that you know the traditional printed book market is in for long-term trouble. UCS similarly is going to redefine the very concept of "servers" which will increasingly become associated with virtual machines residing on a unified hosting platform. And the desktop market is not far behind. The "desktop" is rapidly being redefined as a virtual machine residing in the data center that is accessed with a PC, laptop, Mac, thin-client or zero-client device.

Hopefully I will be able to purchase the next edition of the UCS book for my Kindle – the printed version is so passé. I have to highlight sections using a marker and look up words with a dictionary. I even had to make my own bookmark from a magazine flyer since I threw away all my paper versions months ago.

Comments

[Roland Dobbins]

Um, the Kindle does in fact have a touch screen - the Kindle app on my iPhone is totally driven by touch, and superior to the Kindle hardware reader in just about every way except the absence of search (which I hope will be remedied by iPhone 3.0 search services). In fact, the Kindle iPhone/iPod Touch app is so surprisingly good that my hardware Kindle sits there gathering dust.

I believe that a Kindle edition of the UCS book is in the works. Also note that most Cisco Press books are available for Kindle (although not discounted, as they should be).