Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard probably won’t force their mutual customers to take sides after the end of their partnership, though the vendors are deadly serious about competing against one another, analysts said on Friday.
Cisco said Thursday it would not renew its system integrator contract with HP after it expires April 30, which means HP will no longer be a Cisco Certified Channel Partner or Global Service Alliance partner. The company said its relationship with HP had evolved from partnership to competition. As a result, it isn’t appropriate for Cisco to continue sharing road map information with HP, among other things, the head of Cisco’s channel program said on a webcast.
As a hint of the break to come, HP earlier on Thursday had said it would expand its own reseller contract with QLogic for storage switches, a category of product that HP has resold from Cisco. In addition, there were reports earlier this week that Cisco had halted work on a future product called the Nexus 4001d blade switch, designed to fit into the Dell M1000e blade chassis. (Cisco declined to comment on unannounced products and said Dell remains a reseller of several Cisco products.)