As The Datacenter Turns…

This whole ACE thing has had more twists and turns than a daytime soap opera, or perhaps a vampire franchise on the CW aimed at teens and young adults. And things keep getting more interesting. Greg Ferro recently talked to a Cisco official about the ACE, a discussion I believe started by a comment over at Brad Casemore’s blog by a Cisco representative insisting that no, ACE is not dead. Meanwhile, the folks over at Cisco WAAS are very eager to let you know that they have a pulse, and aren’t going anywhere. This seemed necessary as WAAS has been long associated with ACE (I think they shared a business unit at one point), and has been eyed as another potential Cisco market exit. Plus it didn’t help that the WAAS group has recently been rumored to have had massive layoffs.

Calculon on learning the ACE, his fiance, is on life support, and is actually his sister. Also, double-amnesia.

With the ACE in abandoned-but-not-discontinued limbo, speculating is rampant about Cisco’s next move. I think they’re still working on what do to next, and I think the ACE discontinuation got outed quicker than they expected (again, no inside knowledge here). They could do what Juniper did, and just drop out entirely and partner with vendors that have a better product. The obvious partnership would be F5, assuming Cisco could swallow its pride. A10 is another, and also a purchase target since they’re privately held, though I think neither are likely. There are a lot of Riverbed Stingray fans showing up in the comments section of mine and other articles, but since Cisco is still actively competing with Riverbed in the WOC space, that seems especially unlikely. They could end up buying a part of another company, such as Citrix’s NetScaler business. Radware could also be purchased, but they have near zero footprint in the US, and not a great reputation. We’ll have to wait and see, I’m sure there will be more twists and turns.