� IBM to Cisco: Get back down in the weeds | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
At first glance, IBM's announced intention today to buy XML optimization appliance maker DataPower smacks of trying to accelerate the adoption of SOA and head off any pesky performance hiccups along the way. But a deeper look portends an even bigger fish to fry with the deal — for IBM to move quickly to head off Cisco on the road to managing the intelligent IP business networks of the future.
It's a case of both companies (Cisco and IBM) seeing the evolution of applications correctly, but only one of them has the strategic high ground within the enterprise customer.
In Cisco's case (and I'd suggest other infrastructure players like EMC are in the same boat), they're trying to avoid eventual, if slow, irrelevance by taking on a greater role in defining and controlling application architecture. Makes sense: it would be nice to make use of some intelligence and horsepower outside of an application's client and server endpoints. Why not do more with messages in transit, rather than round-tripping everything when heavy lifting needs to be done?
The problem for Cisco is that this requires them to elevate their role in the typical enterprise—to move beyond infrastructure and become relevant players in application architecture. This is where IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle (and, I suppose to an extent, Sun, BEA, and others) live. To resort to a military-ish analogy, these incumbents are defending the high ground. With entrenched defences and the power of position, it will be difficult for Cisco to become king of this hill.
