SINGAPORE:Cisco and Ingram Micro on Thursday announced the launch of Asia's first Cisco Center for Unified Computing in Singapore.

The center will provide Ingram Micro's customers and channel partners with a next-generation data center platform that will accelerate the delivery of new services simply, reliably and with a high degree of security through end-to-end provisioning and migration support. It will also feature technology from APC, CA, Hitachi Data Systems, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Symantec, VMware and other partners.

According to a press release, the Cisco Center for Unified Computing will be a test bed for Cisco partners to simulate real-life scenarios in a heterogeneous hardware and software application environment. The center provides a risk-free environment for partners to share and address their customers' data center requirements and challenges. Cisco's investment with Ingram Micro includes training and additional staff to manage the solution center.

About the Cisco Unified Computing System

•The Cisco Unified Computing System unites computational, network, storage access and virtualization resources in a single energy-efficient system that can reduce IT infrastructure costs and complexity, help extend capital assets, and improve business agility well into the future.

•Based on industry standards, the Cisco Unified Computing System is a new computing model that uses integrated management and combines a "wire once" unified fabric with an industry-standard computing platform to optimize virtualization, reduce a data center's total overall cost, and provide dynamic resource provisioning for increased business agility. The Cisco Unified Computing System:

Can reduce the total cost of ownership by up to 20 percent in capital expenditures (capex) and up to 30 percent in operational expenditures (opex).

Improves IT productivity and business agility, provisioning applications in minutes instead of days and shifting the focus from IT maintenance to IT innovation.

Increases scalability without added complexity; it is managed as a single system, whether it has one or 320 servers with thousands of virtual machines.
Improves energy efficiency by significantly reducing power and cooling costs.

Can provide interoperability and investment protection through an industry-standards-based infrastructure.