Tech vendors race to consolidate the private cloud

I think the (still unconfirmed) talks between IBM and Sun is the latest and maybe final round of tech takeovers before the next big bang. IBM, Cisco, H-P, Dell and Oracle are awash in cash (unlike the banks, more companies and me) and now find themselves in a race. What's the race? I'd call it the private cloud consolidation.

While I think there are still a lot of unanswered questions about Cisco's announcement on Monday about unified computing, it was a stage setting event.  Did they really get through an entire press conference without anyone asking how much will they charge for
the UCS line? The best technology decisions, especially in infrastructure, are usually the most simple. It is a lot easier to push, standardized data to a browser instead of running cumbersome client/server setups. Cisco wants to sell you the whole package. H-P will use partners to sell you the package. And a real opportunity resides for systems integrators to create unified communications, storage and computing systems from a best of breed, standards-based vendor group.

So the race is on. I think the next big bang will be when companies, particularly small and medium customers start to think that maybe they should just skip the private cloud step and go right to the next generation of business infrastructure suppliers. That means that the real competition to Cisco, IBM, et al could be companies with whom they have never competed. Amazon, Slicehost, Cloudera, Cloudkick combos could be the next business computing alternative.

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