Cisco said that it will not continue the partnership with Hewlett-Packard after the contract expires on April 30. The breakup of the long-term relationship of the Hewlett-Packard and Cisco companies will affect the business and hurt the customers. Though both the traders are serious about competing against each other, yet they won't compel their mutual customers to take sides.

Hewlett-Packard had revealed that it would enlarge its own reseller contract with QLogic for storage switches. Cisco had brought to an end the work on a future product called the Nexus 4001d blade switch, which was considered to fit into the Dell M1000e blade chassis.

"We expect the competition between Cisco and HP to be intense over the next few years", said Nikos Theodosopoulos, UBS Warburg analyst.

The break-up is might a good news for Cisco-focused partners as earlier they had to compete with Hewlett-Packard.