(19-Feb-10) In a move that perhaps seemed inevitable as the one-time strong partners began to butt competitive heads more and more in the data centre, Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) have ended the last vestiges of their partnership.
In a video blog, Keith Goodwin, senior vice-president of Cisco's worldwide partner organization, confirmed Cisco was ending its system integrator contract with HP when it expires on April 30th, ending HP's role as a both a Cisco Certified channel partner and a Global Service Alliance partner. HP also made a move to back away from Cisco, disclosing an agreement to resell QLogic Corp.-developed 8Gbit/sec Fibre Channel switches, an offering HP formerly sourced from Cisco.
In his video, Goodwin said that in recent years, Cisco and HP have begun to develop differing visions of how to deliver value in the data centre, leading to increased competition between the companies that led to the decision to end the partner relationship.