back to article Cisco California pricing revealed

Cisco Systems is fixing to start shipping its "California" Unified Computing System blade servers with their integrated networking for servers and storage, and it looks like one of the key features not on the list of components for the California boxes is going to be a red discount pen. Cisco is charging some pretty high prices …

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  1. James Blessing

    normal

    Cisco's standard pricing method is to publish a list price and then discount by 30-50%

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    OMG...

    Cisco either has some very dumb customers, some very rich customers or a marketing department that thinks that they can pull this off.

    Perhaps they have all three, but when I compare this to HP and Dell blades, I don't think it's a realistic option, even if they plan to discount in a similar manner to the way they move switches.

    And regarding Cisco switching network, with Juniper, Brocade/Foundry and Extreme as enterprise-class options, I'm beginning to think that Cisco may have taken their eyes off their core business, thus leaving it vulnerable.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Hmm

    "I'll take a stab at comparing California to other blade alternatives once I gather up some more information"

    careful to compare apples with apples when you do. although I expect Cisco will not be a budget option, it's worth remembering the "end to end" "unified fabric" which will "significantly enhance" virtualization technology.

    yup, loads of quote marks, but the vision is a good one. If you have the right kind of infrastructure this could well be a big enough reason to pay them their ransom. FCoE to the virtual machine could be very useful, as could reducing complexity of your infrastructure. I recently implemented a solution with no less than 6 switches (2x24port Gig eth and 2x20 port FC) for a 4 server solution. I suspect this Cisco kit can reduce that count enough to make it worthwhile. Even if it's expensive, I won't need to explain the 18 empty ports on every switch to a customer :)

    Paris? just wishing for a simpler time where switches were switches, and blades were laptops without screens.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    List prices are meaningless

    List price pretty much means nothing for most companies.. the market value is charged, depending on factors such as market! and region. A list price is pretty much always discounted by all manufacturers. We're not talking a HMV 10% discount either.

    Any manufacturer worth their salt should be trying to sell you a solution, and then charge appropriately. A product list price is not even a guideline.

  5. Justin White
    Coat

    Re: Hmm By Anonymous Coward

    FCoE and CEE is nothing more than a pipe dream, given the lack of multi-hop support. All it really does is replace two commodity parts with an expensive commodity part. No thanks, but that's not even close to making sense for anyone.

    Why did you think you needed 6 switches for 4 servers? I've got some really sweet bags of dirt you could probably use too. If you can't see the forest for the trees, you should find a different line of work. Surely, you're joking.

    Mines the one with $$$$$$$$ on the back...

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    They'll Sell

    After all -- cisco got away with actually initially shipping FC switches that did not even guarantee packets were delivered in order. Mgmt likes cisco and microsoft --- The current "no-brainer" choices for MBAs.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cisco Discounts

    California will more than likely be on Cisco's global price list and the discounts work like this for partners

    Select 32%

    Premier 37%

    Silver 39%

    Gold 42%

    They also have OIP which is register the deal with Cisco and they give an extra 6% discount (aslong as you are not a managed account)

    There is also other various programs which mean they can discount up to 55% on certain lines

    CIsco is also doing a DC acreditation which has a 45% discount of the GPL

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    California dreamin'

    One of the gents on another forum I frequent is a teacher in California; he was told last week there is to be a *minimum* 10% pay cut, no more money to their state-mandated pension, healthcare for their retired staff to stop, cap or eliminate the current staffs' healthcare, and quite likely more 'sanctions' to follow.

    Guess that'll be where Cisco's money will be coming from.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @Justin White

    FCOE is not a pipe dream, it's a very useful technology which can be used to good effect with virtualization.

    The 6 switches were to provide a best practice virtualization network config which happened to include iSCSI, FC and Ethernet. If you go on a virtualization course from VMware they will fill in the details for you as to why each ESX host requires 8-10 gig ethernet ports and a couple of HBAs. If you speak with any network switch vendor they will gladly explain why iSCSI traffic should not be on the same switch as ethernet traffic, assuming you like your network to perform well.

    Please do not assume I am joking or that I am stupid simply because you don't understand what I do for a living. Enterprise virtualization is a very different beast to your home system.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cisco Discounts

    Cisco has contracted discounts with many customers, and those discounts are based on networking gear, not x86 servers. As a result, Cisco has to create an artificially high price so there is a normal price after discount.

    Look at the average discounts HP has on Superdomes compared to average discounts on Proliants.

    Back in 1998, Sun Microsystems created a second price/discount tier for its workstations and low-end servers so they could play the same list pricing game as the x86 server vendors. Silicon Graphics did not do this, and they had a very high list price on their Windows NT Visual Workstation.

    Time will tell if Cisco's pricing and discount strategy for UCS is the right one. I suppose they could have branded it Linksys and sold it at a low list, minimally discounted price.

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