Cisco and VMware Enhance Virtualization with Powerful, Scalable Unified Computing System

OEM Agreement Brings Unified Computing to Businesses, Enabling Reduced Total Cost of Ownership, Increased Business Agility and Simplification of System Management

SAN JOSE, CA, and PALO ALTO, CA. – Cisco® and VMware today announced a comprehensive, strategic original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement which will incorporate product engineering and integrated sales and support strategies for datacenter virtualization and unified computing. The resulting combination of the Cisco Unified Computing System with VMware’s virtualization platform will provide customers with access to a unique and powerful virtualized and physical computing system over an intelligent, unified network fabric.

Highlights / Key Facts:
Benefits of agreement:

* The Cisco Unified Computing System is a next-generation datacenter platform that unites compute, network, storage access and virtualization into a cohesive system and, coupled with VMware’s virtualization platform, will provide an efficient, reliable, scalable and flexible environment for delivery of IT-as-a-service..
* The Unified Computing System with VMware virtualization will enable joint customers to expand the deployment of virtualization to a broader range of mission-critical applications while helping to significantly reduce their total cost of ownership (TCO), increase business agility, simplify system management and improve energy efficiency.
* Further, the Cisco and VMware relationship will provide a foundation for next-generation cloud-based services, giving customers the choice of deploying and managing applications on internal or external clouds, or deploying them into federated “private” clouds for even greater scalability.

Technology features

* Each Cisco Unified Computing System will support thousands of virtual machines to establish a new milestone for computing density.
* Specific areas of development and technical integration for the Unified Computing System architecture include:
o Support for the unified fabric with certification of consolidated I/O via 10Gb lossless Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE);
o Built-in VN-Link, a new technology being jointly proposed to the IEEE, a professional association for the advancement of technology, as one of the industry standards-based approaches for providing granular network visibility at the virtual machine level;
o Integration with the VMware vCenter™ suite of management products for managing virtual network policies and resources;
o Virtualization consulting services from Cisco to help customers create and deploy server, network and storage virtualization solutions across their datacenters that reduce costs by provisioning new applications quickly and safely, while maintaining high levels of application performance.

Integrated Sales and Support

* Cisco will also offer virtualization consulting services to help customers accelerate the deployment of Unified Computing Systems across their datacenters, helping to reduce costs by provisioning new applications quickly and with a high level of security, while maintaining high levels of application performance.
* Cisco continues to further extend its relationship with VMware by becoming a VMware Authorized Consultant (VAC) partner, which assists in the development and incorporation of virtualization services as part of an overall datacenter offering. By expanding VMware service capabilities through the program, Cisco is better positioned to bring its customers complete datacenter solutions.
* The Cisco and VMware Virtualization Assessment Service and the Cisco and VMware Planning and Design Service help identify and close gaps in customers’ server, storage and network infrastructures to provide a virtualized, consolidated end-to-end architecture.
* Cisco and VMware intend to educate alliance partners and customers on the use of virtualization technology, and to scale this knowledge through industry-leading education and certification programs.
* Cisco and VMware will collaborate on joint sales, joint channel programs, and marketing activities that will help customers accelerate their datacenter virtualization projects to drive the adoption of datacenter virtualization over shorter periods of time.

Supporting Quotes:

“VMware has been working with Cisco for more than three years to bring together VMware’s virtual datacenter operating system with the intelligent network fabric,” said Tod Nielsen, chief operating officer, VMware. “The Cisco Unified Computing System combined with our virtualization technology, including the VMware vSphere product family currently under development, will allow us to extend those developments in a scalable, high-performance manner with a cloud-based architectural approach.”

“Cisco and VMware have a strong history of helping our mutual customers address their datacenter and virtualization needs,” said Carl Eschenbach, executive vice president of worldwide field operations, VMware. “As a VAC partner, Cisco can help our customers further reduce costs, improve flexibility and increase availability of their data centers.”

“The Cisco Unified Computing System is designed to greatly simplify the ability for customers to transition to fully virtualized datacenters,” said Prem Jain, senior vice president, Server Access and Virtualization Business Unit, Cisco. “We are working closely with VMware to increase visibility of virtualized infrastructures that can be managed and secured as easily as physical machines, but at a more dynamic scale across the datacenter. We believe this kind of manageability will further accelerate the market adoption of virtualization and provide for more flexible and responsive datacenter environments.”