Cisco appoints cloud computing specialist

Arguably to extend the reach of its UCS system

Could Cisco become a cloud services provider?

Network giant Cisco has employed ex-Sun employee Lew Tucker as its chief technology officer for cloud computing.

While the appointment has fuelled speculation that Cisco is looking to become a cloud services provider, an equally likely scenario is that it is pushing to get its Unified Computing System (UCS) adopted by major cloud providers.

Cisco announced its UCS earlier this year, based around a blade server codenamed California, which aims to take a share of the $60bn (£40.3bn)-a-year server market.

However, Cisco's product does not show up in analyst IDC's recent market statistics which looked at the worldwide server market. But perhaps this is not surprising, given that it only launched in January.

Tucker's past achievements include the creation of cloud CRM vendor Salesforce.com's AppExchange market.