San Jose, California - US networking giant Cisco Systems Inc is expected to release its own server onto the market, in a move that would bring it into competition with its partner firms Hewlett- Packard and IBM, a US newspaper reported Monday.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the company would present its new product at a press conference later Monday.

Cisco Chief Technology Officer Padmasree Warrior has already indicated that the product would be an entirely new kind of system that was not commercially available to rival existing HP, IBM and Dell servers, according to the report.

Industry insiders have said Cisco will unveil a so-called blade server equipped with virtualization software from VMware and management software BMC.

Blade servers are small and compact server units that power data centres. The new product is expected to do for data centres what the iPod and iTunes has done for music, BMC CEO Bob Beauchamp was quoted as saying in the report. The new integrated server system made operations incredibly easy, he added.

Cisco, the world's biggest specialist in network infrastructure, has suffered a massive slump in sales and profits to the surprise of analysts.

The company already operates its Linksys system, a compact media hub for consumers. With the anticipated new product, Cisco would penetrate a market currently dominated by Hewlett-Packard and IBM.