Cisco upped the stakes against Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) by extending compute price protection and price quote validity for servers to 14 days.

Previously, quotes for its Unified Computing System (UCS) were valid for seven days. Per CRN, an email from Cisco SVP Tim Coogan acknowledged the previous policy had “been difficult to work with in a market moving this quickly.”

“The additional week should give you more time with your customers, keep deals moving through their approvals, and help you hold momentum through the quarter,” Coogan wrote.

Coogan confirmed to the title that the move, in effect since August 16, reflects a push from Cisco to adapt to market needs and better support customers' transaction cycles. It also comes as rivals like HPE recently guaranteed price quotes on compute, storage, and infrastructure below the $1 million mark. The firm also recently expanded server quote validity to 30 days, a move that Dell echoed earlier this week.

Volatility in the market comes as the global memory shortage continues unabated. As explored in SDxCentral’s Memory & Storage Supplement, supply chain woes are a direct consequence of AI inference outpacing supply, leading vendors and hyperscalers alike to explore ways of re-architecting storage. For example, players like Broadcom claim virtual machine (VM) utilization is a better stopgap than buying more memory, while Meta's Vistara chip recycles memory modules from decommissioned older servers into newer models.

Cisco channel disgruntlement

CRN quoted various Cisco partners on the status quo, which has seen Cisco revise customer and partner contract terms to accommodate changing component prices while leaving open further increases.

One unnamed executive claimed the firm had “consistently been the most restrictive with terms and conditions for UCS,” and thus Cisco servers were becoming less relevant in the channel.

“Our sellers hate it,” the executive put it bluntly, while another said the 14-day increase still puts it at a disadvantage against Dell, HPE, and Supermicro as they see consumer traction over their 30-day guarantees.

Cisco later this year will offer Supermicro compute solutions as part of its Nvidia-centric AI Factory suite. This move saw positive reaction per CRN reporting, with Supermicro delivering the memory availability that Cisco is supposedly lacking. According to one sales executive, it currently takes six to nine months for a customer to get their hands on a UCS server.