No other vendor yet has all the pieces for the kind of tight integration Cisco has achieved, Kerravala said. If Intel makes server and switch chips that can talk to each other at that level, smaller manufacturers will be able to offer coordination with products from other vendors that also use Intel.

"This gives the rest of the field an opportunity to go compete with Cisco," Kerravala said. Though they wouldn't be likely to match Cisco overnight, these smaller rivals ultimately could claim high-level interoperability based on a de facto industry standard of Intel chips, he said. One customer of such an architecture might be Arista Networks, a maker of high-performance data-center switches that is already a partner of both Intel and Fulcrum. Arista's switches are geared toward very large cloud-computing infrastructures that need connections as fast as 40G bps or 100G bps. Arista was not immediately available to comment on the Intel-Fulcrum deal.

Intel has tried to enter the network infrastructure business in the past, with little success. It has a better chance to succeed now because of the closer relationship between computing and networking, Kerravala said.

Broadcom, a major rival of Intel's for both switch and controller silicon, said on Tuesday it has been able to achieve the same kinds of data-center integration capabilities in conjunction with its customers. "The silicon vendors have to provide the capabilities in their chips, and the system vendors have to then tie it all together with their software," said Rajiv Ramaswami, executive vice president and general manager of Broadcom's infrastructure and networking group.

The types of higher-level capabilities that Intel and others are talking about should cause IT administrators to look closely at interoperability, Kerravala added. While all Ethernet devices will work together at a basic level, the more advanced types of interaction aren't likely to work across all brands of gear that an enterprise may buy, potentially limiting choice.