EMC, Cisco expand alliance

BENGALURU, INDIA: EMC and Cisco announced that they are expanding their strategic alliance to help customers take advantage of their information infrastructures to realize the benefits of next-generation virtualized data centers.

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

Cisco Unified Computing System brings together computational, storage access and network resources into a system optimized for virtualization. This offers customers a new approach to simplifying data center complexities while lowering cost of ownership by integrating the Cisco Unified Computing System with EMC’s information infrastructure technologies. These include automated IT management solutions such as EMC Smarts and EMC ControlCenter, storage products, and VMware’s virtualization tools.

“Customers are asking vendors to collaborate to address critical data center 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 Frank Hauck, EVP—Global Marketing and Customer Quality, EMC. “Given virtualization is at the core of these next-generation data center 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 center architectures,” he mentioned.

“Customers are increasingly looking to industry leading companies to collaborate and deliver architectural solutions that increase business agility and reduce costs,” said Rob Lloyd,

EVP—Worldwide Operations, Cisco. “We have validated this approach through our longstanding strategic alliance with EMC. Together, EMC and Cisco, along with VMware, are unleashing the power of virtualization by pioneering a system level approach to deliver advances in efficient data center management and security and business continuance,” he added.