In so many ways, the Cisco announcement was a throwback to the last century. Yes, it was BIG. Satellite uplinks, worldwide audience, a parade of Cisco executives and a roomful of attendees in a world-class venue. John Chambers is extremely compelling and I always enjoy his presentations. I have tremendous respect for him, and for what Cisco has done and is doing for the industry.

The announcement itself was the official unveiling of The Unified Computing System. It is Cisco’s vision for a computing world where the “network is the platform” for all computing needs. The integration of Computing, Virtualization, and Network and Storage access is the central message. It is a platform for innovation, a strategy for execution, and the basis for a partnering strategy that was discussed at great length. The event was short on details about what the new Cisco system actually does; the customer and partner testimonials generally focused on the value of virtualization in the data center, and the resulting advantages this provides for capital and operational efficiencies along with business agility (there was no shortage of high tech speak at this event, too much if you ask me). One of the contentions is that virtualization reduces the requirement for hardware expansion – which I can believe. And this means there is less “stuff” in the data center. Management is simplified, because there is less stuff. Deployment is simplified, because there is less stuff. And, energy is reduced, because there is less stuff.

My information technology background left me wanting additional information about how these benefits would be achieved, wondering how the integration with legacy systems would actually be accomplished (the answer given was “services”), and imagining that the benefit of this would be most pertinent to new installations where the Cisco architecture and implementation would be rolled out from scratch.

I was particularly interested in how this strategy addresses the goal of energy efficiency. The answer is, only indirectly. Energy efficiency is the consequence of the promised benefit of virtualization and equipment optimization. While this makes intuitive and theoretical sense, I don’t feel comforted that this approach will yield any significant energy efficiency gains any time soon. The challenge facing us with respect to reducing the world’s energy use is a massive one. Reading Joe Polastre’s blog on President Obama’s new energy agenda, will remind you of the enormity of the problem and the need for us to move quickly. To do so, energy management needs to be a focus. It needs to be a strategy. Energy information needs to be treated with the same priority and management attention as asset information, network performance or application efficiency. Only then will we have the ability to effect positive change on this problem. The gap between what is really happening with the equipment and infrastructure and the software and management tools that are used in the data center must be closed.

Cisco’s strategy holds great promise, and could well be a game changer as cited in the announcement. But it isn’t enough. Make Energy Management a strategy; make it a priority.