Marketing is one thing, but as you are highlighting risk I’d like to know what CIO’s think the risk is of buying big stacks of Microsoft + HP stuff? There will be CIOs who have an aversion to that, especially when the HP guys land and then want to expand.

I think this is a risk for VMware because I’ve heard customers talk about these kind of stacks as though they really believe it’s the strategic way forward, and these are the big customers with big pockets that have already paid for VMware ELAs which are about to time out…

It’s a risk for my employer, Cisco, but also an opportunity because the partners who suddenly lose all their services to integrate these pieces suddenly have a drip of revenue where their used to be a flood. Now partners look for some other, best of breed, vendors to put custom solutions together to fit each customer’s requirements instead of a M$+HP “one size fits all” stack.

I will believe it when I see it, when I have a beer with some different customers and start to hear a pattern of this being more than marketing and decision makers being influenced to make a decision on it.

We live in interesting times

Great post,
Steve

Convergence in two dimensions.

Steve