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Cisco and EMC, Together With VMware, Form Coalition to Accelerate Pervasive Virtualization and Private Cloud Infrastructures
(Market Wire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) SAN JOSE, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 11/03/09 --
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) and EMC, together with
VMware, today introduced the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, an
unprecedented collaboration of three information technology (IT) industry
leaders. The coalition has been created to accelerate customers' ability to
increase business agility through greater IT infrastructure flexibility,
and lower IT, energy and real estate costs through pervasive data center
virtualization 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 organization. It can be managed
either by that organization 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 center with the agility required for business
innovation at substantially lower costs.
Worldwide spending on data center technology infrastructure and services
exceeds $350 billion(1) annually, according to McKinsey and Company
estimates, with half of that spent on capital expenses (products) and half
on operating expenses (services and labor). Further, an estimated 70
percent(2) or more of those costs are expended to maintain existing
infrastructures, leaving 30 percent or less for new technology initiatives
and applications that can provide breakthrough differentiation for
businesses. It is also estimated that approximately $85 billion(3), or 20%
of this total market, can be addressed with data center virtualization and
private cloud technology by 2015.
The Virtual Computing Environment coalition offers organizations of all
sizes an accelerated approach to data center transformation with dramatic
efficiencies that promise significant reductions in both capital and
operating expenses. As a result, organizations will no longer have to
choose between best-of-breed technologies and end-to-end vendor
accountability.
With the introduction of Vblock? Infrastructure Packages, the
Virtual Computing Environment coalition will provide customers with a
fundamentally better approach to streamlining and optimizing 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 virtualization, networking, computing, storage,
security, and management technologies from Cisco, EMC and VMware with
end-to-end vendor accountability.
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.
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
virtualize 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
capitalized by investments from VMware and Intel. Because the Vblock
architecture relies heavily on Intel Xeon® processors and other Intel
data center 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.
ANNOUNCEMENT DETAILS:
1. First Offering: Vblock Infrastructure Packages
The Virtual Computing Environment coalition today introduced Vblock
Infrastructure Packages to accelerate the virtualization of IT
infrastructures by minimizing risk, complexity and time to benefit.
Vblock Infrastructure Packages are validated platforms of engineered,
integrated IT infrastructure from Cisco, EMC and VMware, that deliver a
breakthrough total cost of ownership and pervasive virtualization at a
scale to meet today's most demanding use cases. Vblock Infrastructure Packages can be easily scaled with additional
compute and storage capability after purchase, a key differentiator versus
today's monolithic IT systems. Vblock Infrastructure Packages can be extended by complementary systems
integrators, service providers, channel partners, and ISVs. Early customer trials of Vblock Infrastructure Packages have delivered
up to 40 percent reductions in the cost of operating and managing
virtualized data center infrastructures. The following family of Vblock Infrastructure Packages is being offered
by the Virtual Computing Environment coalition: Vblock 2 is a high-end configuration supporting up to 3,000-6,000
virtual machines that is completely extensible to meet the most demanding
IT needs of large enterprises and service providers. Designed for
large-scale and 'green field' virtualization, Vblock 2 takes advantage of
Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS), Nexus 1000v and Multilayer
Directional Switches (MDS), EMC's Symmetrix V-Max storage (secured by RSA),
and the VMware vSphere platform. Vblock 1 is a mid-sized configuration supporting 800 up to 3,000
virtual machines to deliver a broad range of IT capabilities to
organizations of all sizes. Designed for consolidation and optimization
initiatives, Vblock 1 is comprised of a repeatable model leveraging Cisco's
UCS, Nexus 1000v and MDS, EMC's CLARiiON storage (secured by RSA), and the
VMware vSphere platform. Vblock 0 will be an entry-level configuration available in 2010,
supporting 300 up to 800 virtual machines, for the first time bringing the
benefits of private clouds within reach of medium-sized businesses, small
data centers or organizations, and for test and development by channel
partners, systems integrators, service providers, ISVs, and customers.
Vblock 0 is also comprised of a repeatable model leveraging Cisco's UCS and
Nexus 1000v, EMC's Unified Storage (secured by RSA), and the VMware vSphere
platform.
Also today, EMC is introducing Ionix? Unified Infrastructure Manager as an
integrated, unified element manager for Vblock. Unified management is a
central factor in helping customers reduce operating expenses. As an
element manager, Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager is designed to
support a wide range of enterprise management consoles.
A comprehensive security framework based on EMC RSA security products,
including RSA enVision, has been validated with Vblock Infrastructure
Packages. RSA security solutions are layered onto the Vblock architecture
to deliver security policy management and security at three levels:
identity, information and infrastructure. Vblock is designed to extend a
customer's existing enterprise security controls to the virtual
infrastructure and does not require the customer to replace security
software already in place.
Further Vblock Infrastructure Packages will be developed to serve
business needs across three categories: shared services, applications and
vertical industry solutions. For example, the Virtual Desktop
Infrastructure on Vblock solutions will enhance the provisioning, scale-out
and back-end management of enterprise applications and users. To help
ensure solutions are de-risked and highly secure, Vblocks will be ISO 27001
compliant. Vblock Infrastructure Packages are scheduled to be available this
quarter direct from authorized systems integrators and channel partners.
EMC, Cisco and VMware components can be purchased directly from the
respective companies or their authorized partners.2. Integrated Presales, Professional Services and Support
The Virtual Computing Environment coalition has committed to unify customer
engagement with investments spanning dedicated pre-sales, professional
services and single support experience to provide a seamless, end-to-end
customer and partner experience.
The Virtual Computing Environment coalition Solution Support Team is a
cross-company presales team, fully trained in all elements of Vblock
architecture and go-to-market resources to work with customers and partners
and to facilitate engagements. Virtual Computing Environment coalition professional services, jointly
developed and delivered, will help customers to understand how to maximize
value and speed time to solution. These offers include: the Cloud-based
Business Advisory Service, Private Cloud Strategic Impact Advisory Service,
Private Cloud Architecture Impact Advisory Service, Virtual Desktop
Advisory Service, Cloud Computing Strategy Service, and Vblock Design and
Implementation Service. Virtual Computing Environment seamless support offers customers
unmatched technical support and rapid problem resolution for virtualization
and private cloud solutions. The coalition companies will leverage
in-depth cross training and investments in joint problem re-creation labs
as well as integrated processes and best practices with a single point of
accountability.3. Acadia Solutions Joint Venture and Investment
The Virtual Computing Environment coalition today also introduced
Acadia -- a Cisco and EMC solutions joint venture to build, operate,
and transfer Vblock infrastructure to organizations that want to accelerate
their journey to pervasive virtualization and private cloud computing while
reducing their operating expenses. Acadia expects to begin customer
operations in the first calendar quarter of calendar year 2010.
Founded on a Vblock architecture that incorporates Cisco, EMC and
VMware technologies, Acadia will train and help customers and an ecosystem
of service providers and other partners to build, operate and transfer
Vblock Infrastructure Packages to customers or their partner of choice.
In addition to Cisco and EMC as the majority investors, the build-out
of Acadia's global capabilities in 2010 also has been capitalized by
investments from VMware and Intel.
"We have been pleased to contribute industry leading data center building
blocks to server and storage solutions from EMC and Cisco. We look forward
to extending these relationships by supporting their Virtual Computing
Environment coalition in a similar fashion," said Kirk Skaugen, vice
president and General Manager of Intel's Data Center Group. "Our
investment in Acadia will provide a deployment option for customers looking
to take advantage of Intel's latest data center innovations."
4. Vblock Partner Ecosystem
The Virtual Computing Environment coalition has established a robust set of
partners committed to the coalition. This includes representation from the
entire partner ecosystem, including systems integrators, value added
resellers, service providers, and independent software vendors. There are
six system integrators at launch: Accenture, Capgemini, CSC, Lockheed
Martin, Tata Consulting Services, and Wipro.
The entire community of partners will augment, sell and deliver Vblock
solutions to accelerate the journey to pervasive virtualization and private
cloud for organizations of all sizes. The Vblock partner ecosystem will offer systems integrators and channel
partners a business and technical solution on-ramp to private cloud
infrastructures. Click here
to read commentary from systems integrators and channel partners
participating in this ecosystem.Vblock Infrastructure Packages support a broad range of operating
systems and applications, enabling partners and customers to rapidly
migrate existing applications to Vblock, accelerating broad-scale
virtualization and time to results.
Read perspectives from Vblock Partner Ecosystem members here:
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2009/prod_110309c.html
"Today's announcement addresses our customers' greatest challenges and
opportunities in the data center," said John Chambers, CEO of Cisco.
"This coalition is about more than technology and partnership. It is about
an entirely new and unique approach to the data center that improves
utilization, 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 optimizing virtual resources."
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
organizations 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."
"Customers are increasingly looking to virtualization 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."
Watch John Chambers, Joe Tucci and Paul Maritz discuss the Virtual
Computing Environment coalition here.
Customer Quote
"Purdue is a research university and the majority of our IT needs are spent
on high-performance computing, which requires strong computing, massive
amounts of storage, and high-speed networking fabric," said Steven
Tally, CTO of Purdue University. "The Vblock solution offers these
elements in a single pre-tested, pre-integrated solution which will be
easier to deploy. VMware, Cisco, and EMC are ideal partners to respond to
this problem because they offer complementary tool sets and have a history
of delivering good products in the market space. When these solutions are
tied together in a coherent and systematic way, it is very good news for an
environment like Purdue."
Watch Purdue's Steven Tally discuss the Virtual Computing Environment
Coalition here:
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/videos/purdue_110209.html
News Webcast
John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco, Joe Tucci, chairman, president
and CEO of EMC Corp, and Paul Maritz, president and CEO of VMware will
discuss the new Virtual
Computing Environment coalition and how it will help organizations
simplify and accelerate pervasive virtualization and the transition to
private cloud infrastructures.
When: Nov. 3, 2009 at 8:30 a.m. PST/ 11.30 a.m. EST Where: http://event.ciscowebseminars.com/clients/cisco/coalition
Twitter
EMC and Cisco will be taking questions from the Twitter community.
Please submit questions to @CiscoSystems or @EMCCorp.
Additional Resources
Cisco
Landing page www.cisco.com/govce
Learn more about the Cisco
Unified Computing System
Learn more about
Cisco Data Center Services
Read "Cisco Data Center"
blog
Follow Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior
on Twitter.
Follow the Cisco Data Center team on
Twitter.
EMC
Launch landing page www.emc.com/powerof3
Twitter www.twitter.com/emccorp
Facebook www.facebook.com/emccorp
YouTube www.youtube.com/user/emccorp
Chuck Hollis's Blog www.chucksblog.emc.com
IT Management 2.0 Blog www.itmanagement2.com
Chad Sakac's Blog www.virtualgeek.typepad.com
VMware
Launch landing page(s) = www.vmware.com/cisco and www.vmware.com/emc
Twitter = http://www.twitter.com/vmware
Facebook = http://www.facebook.com/pages/VMware/6975960973
YouTube = http://www.youtube.com/vmwaretv
VMware Blogs = http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/planet/vmware/
VMware vSphere Blog = http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere
About Cisco
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms
how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information on Cisco can
be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to
http://newsroom.cisco.com.
About EMC
EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world's leading developer and provider
of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable
organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create
value from their information. Information about EMC's products and services
can be found at www.EMC.com.
About VMware
VMware (NYSE: VMW) delivers solutions for business infrastructure
virtualization that enable IT organizations to energize businesses of all
sizes. With the industry leading virtualization platform -- VMware
vSphere(TM) -- customers rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating
expenses, improve agility, ensure business continuity, strengthen security
and go green. With 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion, more than 150,000
customers and 22,000 partners, VMware is the leader in virtualization which
consistently ranks as a top priority among CIOs. VMware is headquartered in
Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at
www.vmware.com.
Note 1: Worldwide spending by businesses and other organizations on
technology infrastructure and services exceeds $350 billion annually,
according to McKinsey and Company estimates, with half of that spent on
capital expenses (products) and half on operating expenses (services and
labor).
Note 2: VMware Fortune 1000 Customers Study
Note 3: Based on Cisco internal estimates.
Trademarks
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document are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word
partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any
other company. This document is Cisco Public Information.
EMC, Symmetrix, CLARiiON, Ionix, and V-Max are either registered trademarks
or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries.
RSA and RSA envision are registered trademarks of RSA Security Inc.
VMware and VMware vSphere are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of
VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other
marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective
companies. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a
legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.
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Media Contacts:
Pamela Ferrill
Cisco
parupert@cisco.com
+1 925 708 2858
Jennifer Dreyer
EMC
dreyer_jennifer@emc.com
+ 1 508-293-7238
Nick Fuentes
VMware
nfuentes@vmware.com
+ 1 650-427-1104
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