SAN JOSE, California – November 3, 2009 – Cisco 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 billion1 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 percent2 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 billion3, 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 TM 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.
1. First Offering: Vblock Infrastructure Packages
Also today, EMC is introducing IonixTM 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.
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.
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.
"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 Consultancy Services, and Wipro Technologies.
Read perspectives from Vblock Partner Ecosystem members here: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2009/ekits/Quote_Sheet_VCEFinal.pdf
"Today's announcement addresses our customers' greatest challenges and opportunities in the data center." 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 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.
"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 Gerry McCartney, CIO 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 Gerry McCartney discuss the Virtual Computing Environment Coalition here: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/videos/purdue_110209.html
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
EMC and Cisco will be taking questions from the Twitter community.
Please submit questions to @CiscoSystems ((hyperlink to www.twitter.com/ciscosystems)) or @EMCCorp. ((hyperlink to www.twitter.com/emccorp))
Cisco
Landing page www.cisco.com/go/vce
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
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.
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.
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 vSphereTM – 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.
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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.
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