The data center is changing, and with it, networking must evolve. Software-defined networking has emerged as a top trend in the industry, layering software atop the physical components of the data center to make it run more efficiently and more intelligently. And while SDN is a key contributor to the hyperscale developments expected to revolutionize the future of networking, it’s not the whole story. To that end, we’ve seen some interesting developments from industry leader Cisco, who hopes to stay ahead of the curve with a new spin-in, Insieme Networks. Insieme Networks is a zero touch provisioning for Dynamic Fabric Automation. It’s expected to emerge from stealth tomorrow at Cisco Live, and could help Cisco differentiate a new product from the merchant silicon crowd.

The Insieme team has brought tons of innovative solutions to Cisco including two other spin-ins – Andiamo (FC switching) and Nuova (Nexus switching and Unified Computing System (UCS) — the stealthy Insieme Networks will likely be the talk of tomorrow’s Cisco event, as evidenced by a rising number of tweets on the subject and Cisco’s persistent evasion:

@etherealmind You might have to wait until tomorrow…

— Mark Swanborough (@MarkSwanb) June 25, 2013

Dynamic Fabric Automation (Vinci) announcement @ #CLUS by David Yen. Very interesting times ahead.

— Jose Martinez (@DonQnCoke) June 24, 2013

At Insieme, Mario Mazzola and his team have plenty of software engineers, but at the core, they focus on creating ASICs. Expect tomorrow’s Insieme message to include how Cisco will have plenty of “speeds and feeds” to compete with the latest from Arista and others, who are trying to beat Cisco in the 40Gb and 100Gb Ethernet markets.

Insieme a play for SDN?

While details are sparse on Insieme, there is a pretty obvious SDN play with Insieme too. Of course, Cisco is already making progress on being the default OpenFlow controller thanks to OpenDaylight. As a stand-alone startup independent of the Cisco mother-ship, Insieme would have a tough time penetrating the switching architecture market.

Despite the growing need for integrated solutions that work with other components in the data center like storage and minimize the complexity of SDN’s vision for the future, we anticipate Insieme will not be a storage solution. Cisco’s expansive firm has the manpower behind sales and partnerships to incorporate a certain level of integration, and these relationships could be key for Insieme’s early appeal.

“Cisco has such an advantage with sales, marketing and customer install base that it is hard to bet on them not being able to find a market for a new solution,” writes Wikibon senior analyst Stu Miniman.

“First of all, Cisco is not building a storage solution,” Miniman continues. “Will Insieme have some integration with storage? Probably – Andiamo had FC and Nuova has FCoE, so working with storage networking protocols and even integrating with management is important. Cisco’s data center strategy includes lots of partnerships with storage – NetApp FlexPod, VCE Vblock and EMC VSPEX drive a significant percentage of UCS sales and at Cisco Live a bunch of other storage partners including HDS, Tegile, Nimble Storage and Nexenta are exhibiting.”

Where’s Insieme fit in the data center?

With few details out on Insieme, and few expectations for deep integration with data center components, some time will have to pass before Cisco and Insieme realize the full potential behind this new solution. But the hope is that Insieme can add to Cisco’s growing support of open source solutions and cloud frameworks for distributed data storage. This is something Cisco CEO John Chambers speaks on in his company’s first public acknowledgement of Insieme, looking to manage the public’s expectations.

“The way that we will approach it is what we’ve always done on a market opportunity,” Chambers said. “It’s too early to say which way it’s going to go. It’s clearly in its early stages (and) too early to say even if it will work architecturally.”

For CIOs, that means the examination of the transforming networking industry is not a simple decision of “open vs. closed,” or “software vs. hardware,” but rather how IT can drive value. Miniman recommends that enterprise organizations look for solutions that save time, and therefore services and ecosystems are needed for the open source solutions that meet demands of today’s data center. While networking is expected to undergo “seismic” shifts in the coming 5-10 years, the winners remain to be seen.