Cisco thumbs nose at HP over FlexPod

Léo Apotheker got it wrong, says Cisco cloud strategy chief

Cisco has boasted about the success of its FlexPod venture with NetApp at the latter's Insight conference, claiming they have proved HP's former CEO wrong.

At NetApp's Insight technical conference in Berlin, Cisco's vice president for cloud strategy, Peder Ulander, was given a 20-minute speaking slot to talk up the duo's FlexPod offering during the general session.

FlexPod was launched five years ago and is an integrated storage, networking and computing offering from Cisco and NetApp.

During his presentation, Ulander admitted not everyone was convinced of the merits of the union when it first came along half a decade ago.

He said: "As my boss would tell it: In 2010, as we launched FlexPod, a quote was put out by the then-CEO of HP, Léo Apotheker. When questioned about the joint excitement we had about our FlexPod initiative, he responded with the following: 'I don't see it. Our sales guys don't see it. And if they are having success selling this stuff, it must be on Planet Zercon'."

NetApp claims more than 1,000 partners are selling FlexPod globally and, according to IDC, the pair's offering has 21.7 per cent market share – making it the number-two offering in the global integrated infrastructure market, behind VCE.

Ulander triumphantly boasted about FlexPod's success.

"So, I thought it would be fun to take a look at – with my fellow Zerconians – what has happened over the last five years and what we have accomplished since the launch of FlexPod. Five years forward from that time, we've seen tremendous success on this platform: $6bn-plus in revenue, 6,300 FlexPod customers – 50 per cent of which were not customers of Cisco or NetApp, much to the [disapproval] of that CEO."