EMC, Cisco expand strategic alliance
ConvergenceAsia staff
19/03/2009

Information infrastructure technology and solutions provider EMC and networking company Cisco are expanding their strategic alliance to help customers to cost-effectively take advantage of their industry-leading information infrastructures to realise the benefits of next-generation virtualised data centres.

With the launch of the Cisco Unified Computing System, the two companies will focus on testing products for interoperability and on developing data centre solutions and support offerings.

As a next-generation data centre platform, the Cisco Unified Computing System brings together computational, storage access and network resources into a cohesive system optimised for virtualisation.

This offers customers a new approach to simplifying data centre complexities while lowering cost of ownership by integrating the Cisco Unified Computing System with EMC’s broad portfolio of information infrastructure technologies. These include automated IT management solutions such as EMC Smarts and EMC ControlCenter, industry-leading storage products, and VMware’s powerful virtualisation tools.

Customers are asking vendors to collaborate to address critical data centre needs that will drive efficiency and their ability to do more with less. EMC and Cisco share a vision that enterprise IT will eventually evolve towards a private cloud model and both companies are committed to working together to achieve this, said EMC’s Frank Hauck, executive vice president, Global Marketing and Customer Quality.

“Given virtualisation is at the core of these next-generation data centre architectures, EMC and Cisco, along with VMware, have been working together to invest significant resources together to provide customers the efficiency, control and flexibility they desire in next-generation data centre architectures.”

Customers are increasingly looking to industry leading companies to collaborate and deliver architectural solutions that increase business agility and reduce costs, said Rob Lloyd, executive vice president designate, Worldwide Operations for Cisco.

"Together, EMC and Cisco, along with VMware, are unleashing the power of virtualisation by pioneering a system level approach to deliver advances in efficient data center management and security and business continuance."

EMC and Cisco have been collaborating for years on creating an optimised information infrastructure that combines EMC’s expertise in storing, protecting and managing vast amounts of information with the power of Cisco’s intelligent network.

Moving forward, the two companies are focused on data centre transformation by helping customers define where they are today, and more importantly, helping them take their data centre into the future.

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