A year ago when I joined Cisco’s Unified Computing team, HP had just released a web page full of fear, uncertainty and doubt about the just-launched UCS.

Quick note: I’m currently (should be) on holiday!  I drive down to Nurburgring tomorrow so I don’t have time to take the HP FUD apart piece by piece – this is a flavour, it’s all I have time for :-)

In the mean time, Steve Kaplan wrote a well reasoned, objective and data-laden piece about comparing Cisco UCS to the mythical HP Matrix.

This has obviously sent a chilly wind down the comfy corridors at HP HQ because one year on they are playing the FUD game again with another web page full of fear, uncertainty and doubt about the one-year-old UCS.  There are some classic references in this:

  • Referencing the HP funded Tolly Reports as if they are independent (bad science!)
  • Referencing a BMC earnings call as a source of UCS customer experience! (more bad science!)

I can see that this latest marketing output is a typical mish-mash of half truths (yes, HP do sell more servers than Cisco!) and falsehoods (sorry, HP, but you really do need less components with UCS when you are honest) – but I have to thank HP for a fantastic opportunity: here’s what they’ve done for Cisco (cheers!):

  • Free advertising to all HP customers that there is such a beast as UCS and it must be scary for HP to go on the attack (defense).
  • This will get customers phoning Cisco up to ask if these claims are true (it’s nice when customers phone us up, thanks HP!).
  • Cisco folks can take this document apart, piece by piece, with the customer and show the weakness in HP’s approach, the strengths of Cisco as a data center virtualization partner (yes, partner, not just providor).

So it seems that HP can’t fight Cisco fairly in the market with better product vision and delivery so they resort to handbags and name-calling, and their last line of defence is this kind of attack.  What do you think about it?

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