In recent weeks we have seen Cisco start advocating more aggressively a unified approach to enterprise computing in the data center that sees to combine servers, storage and networking under a common management system.

Now we have a startup company called Intelicloud pursuing a similar approach to the Cisco initiative that looks to integrate network, storage and server resources under a common framework.

Both initiatives are heavily dependent on virtualization to make their vision of what the next generation of data center computing should look like and for any organization planning a new data center these systems offer some compelling total cost of ownership advantages.

But where arch-rivals Hewlett-Packard and IBM are going to take philosophical issues with Cisco and Intelicloud is over what is the best approach to unifying the data center. Cisco and Intellicloud are both clearly emphasizing hardware integration. HP, in contrast, is arguing that server, storage and networking integration should be driven by software such as Insight Orchestration and Insight Dynamics, which are the core components of the company's Adaptive Infrastructure. Similarly, IBM has been pushing a New Enterprise Data Center architecture that also looks to leverage IBM software to create a more holistic approach to the data center.

The only two things that are not clear at the moment is how much of an appetite customers have for what amounts to fork-lift upgrades of servers in their data centers should they follow the Cisco and Intellicloud approach, and how much of what HP and IBM are saying is a function of where they stand in the market as data center incumbents. The real question might be how long will it be before HP, IBM, and for that matter Dell and Sun, might bring to market something that looks very similar to the Cisco and Intellicloud offerings?

Clearly, we're at the beginning stages of a major transition in the data center. How this plays out is anybody's guess at this point. But one thing that is for sure is that the way we think about managing the data center is about to change forever.