Cisco Systems, best known as a router and switch supplier for networking equipment, will be making a push into the server market within the next few months, according to news reports.

Cisco plans to start selling servers equipped with virtualization software as early as March, according to The New York Times. Virtualization products allow companies to run numerous business applications, rather than just one, on each physical server, allowing them to save electricity and achieve more from of their hardware purchases.

The entry into the server market is expected to create considerable competitive reaction from longtime Cisco partners such as Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M. and Dell, all of which have had a mutually beneficial relationship with the company.

Industry experts say Cisco’s entry into the server market will complicate business affiliations that may cause an all-out war among the tech titans for one another’s customers, according to the The New York Times.

According to a blog by Cisco Systems’ CTO Padmasree Warrior, the company will be taking an architectural approach called Unified Computing, which is “the advancement toward the next generation data center that links all resources together in a common architecture to reduce the barrier to entry for data center virtualization.”

New server products are expected to be aimed at data centers – a market Cisco has previously identified as a key growth area. The move toward unified communications systems has also stepped up the competition with Microsoft Corp., another of Cisco’s partners.

For more information, visit Cisco’s blog by clicking here.

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