News Release

Cisco Builds Open Partner Ecosystem to Accelerate Industry Transition to Unified Computing

Executives From Accenture, BMC Software, EMC, Intel, Microsoft, and VMware Discuss Data Center Collaboration With Cisco
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Mar 16, 2009

SAN JOSE, California - March 16, 2009 - Cisco today unveiled an open, best-of-breed ecosystem of partners to stimulate innovation, enhance service delivery, and accelerate the market adoption of Unified Computing, an evolutionary data center architecture which unites compute, network, storage access, and virtualization resources in a single cohesive system.

Virtualization is bringing about a significant industry transition and exciting market opportunities around the world. Cisco is collaborating with industry leaders to help customers navigate this transition to optimize virtualization, reduce overall data center cost, and improve business agility. Cisco's open, global partner ecosystem spans a broad spectrum of technology partners, business consulting and systems integration partners, and channel partners. With the introduction of the Unified Computing System, Cisco is delivering innovation to the industry through architecture, technology, partnerships, and services.

Today, during an 11-city Cisco TelePresenceTM meeting hosted by company Chairman and CEO John Chambers, Cisco highlighted its collaboration with data center industry leaders. Senior executives William D. Green, chairman and CEO for Accenture; Bob Beauchamp, CEO for BMC Software; Joe Tucci, chairman, president and CEO for EMC Corp.; Paul Otellini, president and CEO for Intel; Bob Muglia, president of Servers and Tools Business for Microsoft; and Paul Maritz, president and CEO for VMware, discussed how they are working with Cisco on Unified Computing to benefit Enterprise and Service Provider customers.

Technology Partners:

  • Cisco and data center industry leaders have collaborated extensively to deliver a holistic approach to data center virtualization. These technology partners are delivering technological and architectural innovations that unify infrastructure, simplify operations, and amplify business results.
  • Cisco has formed advanced collaborative and development relationships with leading companies across the information technology (IT) industry, including BMC Software, EMC, Emulex, Intel, Microsoft, NetApp, Novell, Oracle, QLogic, Red Hat, and VMware.
  • The relationships with BMC Software, EMC, Microsoft, and VMware extend beyond technical integration to provide services and end-to-end support for the Unified Computing solution.

Business Consulting and Systems Integration Partners:

  • To help customers evolve to next-generation data centers through the power of a Unified Computing architecture, Cisco is expanding its strategic relationships with key business consulting and global systems integration partners. These partners are developing integrated solutions tailored to specific customer needs and collaboratively delivering services with Cisco.
  • Cisco has recently expanded strategic relationships with Accenture, CSC, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and Wipro.
  • Cisco and Accenture today announced four new solutions that help large enterprises improve scalability and reduce the total cost of ownership of IT architecture through a new Unified Computing approach.

Channel Partners:

  • Cisco will initially go to market with a select group of Cisco Data Center Specialized channel partners that already possess the networking, compute, virtualization, storage, and integrated services practices to help customers successfully make the transition to a Unified Computing architecture.

  • As customer demand for Unified Computing accelerates, Cisco will enlist additional channel partners into the new Cisco Unified Computing Authorized Technology Provider Program.

  • Cisco has more than 250 highly trained Data Center Specialized channel partners around the world.

  • Cisco announced it will develop a channel program designed to enable and accelerate the sales of tested, validated reference designs incorporating products from industry-leading data center vendors, including EMC, Microsoft, NetApp, Red Hat, and VMware.

  • With more than 80 percent of its revenue flowing through its channel partners, Cisco is one of the IT industry's most channel-centric companies.

Cisco Executive Quotes:

  • "With today's announcement, Cisco is unleashing the power of virtualization through Unified Computing, the industry's first unified architecture for the virtualized data center. We've built an open ecosystem of industry leaders to help our customers realize the value of this exciting market transition," said Rob Lloyd, executive vice president designate, Worldwide Operations for Cisco.

  • "Time and again, we've seen that orchestrating an open partner ecosystem is the most effective way to successfully drive major market transitions. Through world-class partnerships and collaborative service delivery, Cisco will accelerate the industry evolution to Unified Computing," said Gary Moore, senior vice president, Advanced Services for Cisco.

Industry Leaders on Unified Computing:

Supporting Resources:

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