4/18/2005 -- Little has been said about it, but according to one prominent analyst, Cisco Systems Inc.’s acquisition of TopSpin Communications highlights the company’s move away from its IP-centric marketing emphasis.

TopSpin markets a line of switches that support both conventional Ethernet as well as Fibre-Channel interfaces, but the company really made its reputation in the still-emerging market for InfiniBand solutions, where it’s the market leader.

In this respect, says Gordon Haff, a senior analyst with consultancy Illuminata, TopSpin’s acquisition by Cisco is a landmark, of sorts, in the evolution of the networking giant’s slowly shifting strategy. “Although Cisco is still often thought of as an IP-centric company, it's already significantly moved away from its original all-IP-all-the-time religion,” Haff says, citing Cisco’s entry into the storage area network (SAN) switching space with its acquisition of Andiamo Systems in 2002. “Fibre Channel already had entrenched suppliers, notably Brocade and McData, with much higher market share and far more partnerships, serving an established set of customers and roles. The incumbents remain the leaders, but Cisco has gained significant share and important customers.”

Of course, when Cisco bought Andiamo, Fibre Channel was an established technology, with more than five years of market worthiness under its belt. Not so with InfinBand, notes Haff: “With InfiniBand, Cisco is buying at an earlier stage of development -- before it has become a de facto standard. And it is buying the clear market leader -- a company that has already established top-notch relationships with key OEMs such as Dell, HP, IBM and Sun.”

So why is Cisco moving aggressively into a still-immature technology sector? Haff thinks it’s a defensive gambit. “InfiniBand may not be the pervasive, all-singing, all-dancing uber-fabric that breathless backers once predicted, but it's far from dead,” he points out. “At the very least, it's emerged as the premium interconnect for high-performance technical computing ... more proprietary or more vendor-specific ones like Myricom's Myrinet and Quadrics' QsNet.”

In addition, says Haff, InfinBand’s prospects in commercial data centers are also looking up. “Topspin lets Cisco further hedge its still IP-dominated bets. Maybe InfiniBand will end up displacing Ethernet and Fibre Channel for certain types of tasks. Or maybe not. In either case, Cisco will have compelling product to offer,” he writes. “Cisco is maturing and moving up the stack. Sure, it still sells the underlying network plumbing and makes numerous and regular bets on what types and sizes of switches customers will buy. But its focus is increasingly on its core franchise as the enterprise interconnect of choice.” -Stephen Swoyer