Cisco doesn't make hyper-converged gear, but if it did, it'd probably look like this Cisco is big in converged systems but nowhere in hyper-converged ones. What we mean by that is that Cisco is big in converged systems, such as VCE's Vblocks and the Cisco-NetApp FlexPods, but it doesn't have systems in the Nutanix and Simplivity class, which are more integrated than the Vblock and Flexpod systems. Now that …
...most of the deals I've been in leading with Cisco UCS have still gone to EMC or Nimble when it comes to storage, depending on customer requirements. Cisco account managers have only put Invicta in for special use cases.
They have been very aggressive with discounts for the VSAN nodes though and I too have heard about the Simplivity OEM talks/rumors. That combo plus ScaleIO through their BFFs at EMC would probably scratch any hyper-converged itch they have for the time being.
I still don't think they REALLY want to get too far down the path of being a distinct general purpose storage vendor. What I've seen locally is that a company buying Dell servers will buy Dell or EMC storage (or NetApp through someone else). HP buyers will buy HP or EMC storage (again, sometimes NetApp). Cisco UCS customers feel free to buy whatever they want, and we just try to encourage them to make it something we sell (all of the above, plus Nimble but not NetApp obviously). Cisco is happy because people jump into the Nexus product line as a result, they don't seem to care who wins the storage business.
I suppose we'll see. UCS is eating up the large enterprise/utility/government/cloud services market here right now but these places are usually the Cisco-or-nothing types anyways (at least on networking/wireless/collab), and even then I can't see then jumping storage platforms.
I would nickname it the c*ntblock though.
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