Cisco, EMC and VMware collaboration  
ConvergenceAsia staff
04/11/2009

Cisco and EMC, together with VMware, have introduced the Virtual Computing Environment coalition to accelerate customers’ ability to increase business agility through greater IT infrastructure flexibility, and lower IT, energy and real estate costs through pervasive data centre virtualisation and a transition to private cloud infrastructures.

Cisco, EMC and VMware have worked closely over the past year on a shared vision for the future of enterprise IT infrastructure – private cloud computing. A private cloud is a virtual IT infrastructure that is securely controlled and operated solely for one organisation. It can be managed either by that organisation or a third party, and it can exist on or off premises or in combination. Private cloud computing offers the controls and security of today’s data centre with the agility required for business innovation at substantially lower costs.

“Today’s announcement addresses our customers’ greatest challenges and opportunities in the data centre,” said John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco. “This coalition is about more than technology and partnership. It is about an entirely new and unique approach to the data centre that improves utilisation, power consumption and security of information, all in a way that lowers the total cost to the customer, not via a box, but with a network-based architectural approach for optimising virtual resources.”

With the introduction of Vblock Infrastructure Packages, the Virtual Computing Environment coalition will provide customers with a fundamentally better approach to streamlining and optimising IT strategies around private clouds. Vblock Infrastructure Packages are fully integrated, tested, validated, and ready-to-go/ready-to-grow infrastructure packages that combine best-in-class virtualisation, networking, computing, storage, security, and management technologies from Cisco, EMC and VMware with end-to-end vendor accountability.

Joseph Tucci, EMC chairman and CEO, said Cisco and EMC, together with VMware, are coming together in an unprecedented way to help our customers. They need to be able to shift more of their IT budgets to the development and rapid implementation of new technologies that help their organisations create differentiated business advantages. Many of them understand the vast potential of the private cloud. "With shared roadmaps and a long-term commitment, the Virtual Computing Environment coalition will bring true accountability, along with the best-of-breed technologies our respective customers have come to expect, to help enable their success."

The coalition will scale customer adoption of Vblock systems by enabling a global community of systems integrators, service providers, channel partners, and independent software vendors (ISVs). The coalition has also established unified presales, professional services and support capabilities to simplify customer engagement.

“Customers are increasingly looking to virtualisation to dramatically improve the performance and flexibility of their existing IT systems,” said Paul Maritz, president and CEO of VMware. “Today’s announcement provides a compelling vision and set of roadmaps valuable to any company looking to harness cloud computing in a fundamentally more pragmatic and nondisruptive way.”

In unveiling the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, Cisco and EMC also introduced Acadia, a joint venture focused on accelerating customer build-outs of private cloud infrastructures through an end-to-end enablement of service providers and large enterprise customers. Acadia’s unique “build, operate, transfer” model for delivering the Vblock architecture, addressing people, process and technology, will offer customers further choice, flexibility and cost advantages as they seek to virtualise their IT infrastructures and evolve to private cloud environments.

In addition to Cisco and EMC as the lead investors, the build-out of Acadia’s expanded capabilities in 2010 has also been capitalised by investments from VMware and Intel. Because the Vblock architecture relies heavily on Intel Xeon processors and other Intel data centre technology, Intel will join the Acadia effort as a minority investor to facilitate and accelerate customer adoption of the latest Intel technology for servers, storage, and networking.

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