2/26/2007 -- You might have missed it, but Cisco Systems Inc. last week notched a deal with data warehousing (DW) specialist DATAllegro Inc. to supply that vendor with InfiniBand switches and host channel adapters (HCA) for its commodity DW appliances. Given the ever-expanding scope of enterprise data warehouses, and simmering demand for DW appliances in particular, the deal could turn out to be a not-insignificant revenue generator for Cisco.

What's a DW appliance, you ask? More or less what it sounds like: a turn-key, commodity-based data warehouse-in-a-box. In DATAllegro's case, its appliances tap Dell servers, EMC storage and Cisco InfiniBand switches. CEO Stuart Frost acknowledges that Cisco's contribution isn't quite as upfront sexy as is -- say -- EMC's (DATAllegro's appliances scale from 12 TB on up to 1 PB), but stresses that Cisco and InfiniBand nevertheless have an important role to play.

After all, DATAllegro's appliance, like those from competitors Netezza Inc. and Teradata (a dvision of NCR Corp.), leverage a massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture, which places a premium on performance between nodes. That's where Cisco's InfiniBand switches and HCAs come in.

"We like the performance and [low] latency [of InifniBand] for our data warehousing architecture," says DATAllegro CEO Stuart Frost, interviewed last week at his company's DATAllegro v3 launch event. "Obviously, there isn't quite as much opportunity [for upsell into existing accounts] like with Dell or EMC, but we see Cisco's InfiniBand switches as a crucial component of [the v3 appliance]."

Frost also touted Cisco's unified InfiniBand management framework, which the networking giant unveiled last summer. Some industry watchers predicted that Cisco's InfiniBand unification push might help drive uptake in peripheral or nontraditional markets -- such as, for example, the high-end data warehousing segment. "With the unification of management across Ethernet and InfiniBand product lines, Cisco is eliminating some of the costs associated with point tools for management on the network, including some software licensing, training and procedural costs," wrote Steven Schuchart, a senior analyst for enterprise infrastructure with consultancy Current Analysis, in a research item last summer. For example, Schuchart noted, "with a familiar interface, it will be much easier for administrators to handle both interconnect networks."

Alternatives to InfiniBand are out there -- analysts point to 10 gigabit Ethernet as a particularly challenging competitor -- but Frost and DATAllegro say InfiniBand delivers better performance (at 20 Gbps, approximately twice that of 10 gigabit Ethernet) and an intuitive management interface.

Cisco Server Fabric Switches (like the SFS-7000 Series) use InfiniBand to provide a high-performance unified fabric for connecting servers together into grids of compute resources, Cisco officials say. In this regard, officials argue, they're a neat fit for an MPP data warehousing architecture. "Incorporating Cisco high-performance, low-latency InfiniBand switching products improves speed, scalability and reliability for the most highly distributed and computation intensive data warehousing tasks," said Krish Ramakrishnan, general manager and vice-president of Cisco’s Server Virtualization Business Unit.

Elsewhere, analysts have noted that Cisco -- which kicked off its InfiniBand push with the acquisition of the former TopSpin Networks in 2005 -- has become one of the most visible InfiniBand champions. "[T]he InfiniBand market is small and limited to high-performance computing clusters and is threatened by the falling prices of 10 gigabit Ethernet equipment," Schuchart said. "InfiniBand is still largely a boutique technology and Cisco is the only major Ethernet switch provider to sell InfiniBand equipment." --Stephen Swoyer