Can Cisco Expand Into Asian Data Centers?

Geoff Johnson, research vice president of enterprise communications applications at Gartner, said in an e-mail interview that Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS) signaled that it wanted to be more than just a "plumber installing hardware". Johnson, based in Brisbane, Australia, noted that Cisco has been at market leadership in many areas of networking such as LAN and telephony, but it has traditionally been less strong in, for example, contact centers.

Citing from a Gartner research note released last month, he told ZDNet Asia that although Cisco has a unique offering, displacing incumbents will not be an easy task. In addition, the region's data center operators have tried-and-tested approaches to running their facilities and may not be easily persuaded to rid their habits.