Networking solutions provider Cisco has developed an addition to its Nexus family of switches in the form of the first blade switch in the Nexus line. The company made the announcement on Tuesday, saying the product is being developed for distribution by other vendors who will launch it under their brand names at different times in the near future.

"We are developing it specifically for each of our blade server vendor partners that would like to have unified fabric capabilities," Cisco spokeswoman Lee Davis said. The partners will determine their own launch dates and pricing, with announcements expected to be spread out over the next several months.

Cisco's announcement comes about three weeks after one of its major rivals Blade Network Technologies announced completion of a series B round of financing. Blade manufactures blade server switches as well as top-of-rack switches, sold by the company's OEM partners, such as IBM, NEC, Verari and HP - another major player in the blade server switch space.

According to news reports the new Nexus 4000 switch will support FibreChannel, FibreChannel over Ethernet and IP-based iSCSI standards. The switch can be installed in a blade-server enclosure.