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Gasp! Cisco and HP collaborate on blade switch

14.10.2011
Perhaps it's a matter of keeping your friends close but your enemies closer: Bitter and networking rivals and HP collaborated to develop a switch for HP's blade systems to address the needs of joint customers.

The Cisco Fabric Extender for HP BladeSystem, also known as the Cisco Nexus B22 Fabric Extender for HP, offers tighter integration for customers investing in HP BladeSystem servers and Cisco Nexus switches and preserves investments in existing data center technology, the companies say. Cisco fabric extenders are devices designed to broaden the reach of switch fabrics closer to the server rack for greater scalability.

VITRIOL:

It's a curious collaboration, considering that since Cisco's and HP's . Indeed, it would seem to undermine both companies' respective efforts in those market expansions. And HP is a for data center servers.

"I'm a little surprised," says Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research. "I thought they would have gone to anyone but Cisco. It might be an indicator of the quality of that product. I don't think (HP Networking) has that functionality so the server group has to do what it has to do."

But HP points out that it has a lot of joint customers using HP servers and Cisco switches.