Cisco-HP split may not be too painful for customers

From InfoWorld: Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard probably won't force their mutual customers to take sides after the end of their partnership, though the vendors are deadly serious about competing against one another, analysts said.

Cisco said last week it would not renew its system integrator contract with HP after it expires April 30, which means HP will no longer be a Cisco Certified Channel Partner or Global Service Alliance partner. The company said its relationship with HP had evolved from partnership to competition. As a result, it isn't appropriate for Cisco to continue sharing road map information with HP, among other things, the head of Cisco's channel program said on a Webcast.

As a hint of the break to come, HP had said it would expand its own reseller contract with QLogic for storage switches, a category of product that HP has resold from Cisco. In addition, there were reports that Cisco had halted work on a future product called the Nexus 4001d blade switch, designed to fit into the Dell M1000e blade chassis. (Cisco declined to comment on unannounced products and said Dell remains a reseller of several Cisco products.)

The announcement of the coming change only formalized a break that had been forming over the past few years, analysts said. In the past, HP has resold many of Cisco's high-end enterprise networking products while Cisco has used HP computing platforms, some as the basis for network appliances. Each focused on its own areas of expertise, and though HP did sell networking gear through its ProCurve division, that business was focused mostly on small and medium-sized businesses.

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