Cisco sells servers and has been doing so for several years now. Recently they have tried a new marketing tactic: for some customers they are letting them try the server products for free. While Cisco insists that they are only letting customers “borrow” these servers, it’s clear that if they are letting customers get a free look at the servers they may be having problems selling them.

From a technical standpoint, what’s so great about a Cisco server anyways?

The company has tried to include advanced virtualization capabilities into their server products, something other providers such as Dell and HP are hesitant to do. Cisco’s rivals are questioning: why would you want to put software onto a server? Selling hardware is really what server sales are all about. But what’s more important to a customer is that the use of virtualization can reduce overall server costs. Perhaps that may be why Cisco’s rivals are deeply concerned about its foray into this market when they used to recommend the company’s other network hardware.

But Cisco isn’t doing anything new, at least from their perspective. The company intelligently loads specialized software into routers and switches. Products such as the NetFlow monitoring protocol that come standard in their in-house developed IOS operating system have become industry standards.

While you certainly cannot use IOS to administer and control an entire network of servers, the company is already selling DHCP servers that run IOS. Plus, Cisco is partnering with VMWare with Virtualization, which ultimately may be a course that the rest of the industry will soon follow.

It’s probably what Cisco wants to do: not just sell hardware, but emerge as a leader by having an entire solution for companies. What network engineer would want to put together a patchwork system made of a bunch of different components? Cisco is a name that has a lot of respect in the industry, so using the company for an entire packaged solution is very much a viable strategy.

The Unified Computing System that has VMWare ESX 4.1 connected to an EMC VNXe3300 is an example of Cisco’s storage system offering. This doesn’t just provide reduced complexity; it also saves space and energy by offering a multiplatform server solution equipped with a place to store files as well.

Aside from firmware and troubleshooting software, most server companies are just selling IT purchasers expensive computer hardware. Since severs are generally imaged when they arrive, Cisco is trying to create value by offering a “smarter” server solution that can then require less time to get up and running, much like their switches and firewalls.