Cisco and EMC Take “Three Paths to the Cloud” VCE Strategy to Next Level

Cisco Systems, Inc. and EMC Corporation announced further collaboration to help accelerate IT transformation by providing customers with choice and flexibility via three paths to the cloud – custom-design infrastructure, validated reference architectures, and pre-integrated converged infrastructure.

They introduced new joint reference architectures, aligned channel partner incentives, and integrated customer support to speed customers’ path to the cloud.

Building on a decade-long partnership, they provide enterprise and service provider customers with many options to build cloud infrastructure.

The three paths to the cloud include:

• Implement a custom-designed infrastructure with products
• Install validated, easy-to-deploy reference architectures with Cisco solutions for EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
• Purchase a pre-integrated converged infrastructure with VCE Vblock System.

Partnership Highlights:

• The two new Cisco Validated Designs (CVD) for EMC VSPEX are unified computing reference architectures tailored to SMB and mid-market customers. Designed to accelerate the journey to the private cloud, the CVDs are Cisco Solutions for VSPEX for Hyper-V Architectures and Cisco Solutions for VSPEX for VMware vSphere 5.0 architectures.
• More than 200 Cisco and EMC Velocity channel partners within the global VSPEX community have been trained to resell and deploy EMC VSPEX with Cisco Unified Data Center.
• The two companies have also aligned their channel incentive structures to simplify the process of accruing incentives and boost partner profitability.
• They have implemented a customer support framework for VSPEX for collaborative case management.
• VCE – Cisco and EMC’s joint venture with VMware – pioneered an integrated data center offering with end-to-end vendor visibility, enabling the time-to-market and one of the lowest TCO for converged cloud infrastructure.
• VCE’s productized converged infrastructure standardizes processes and life cycle management to improve application availability and enable VCE’s support experience.
• VCE continues to gain traction in enterprise data centers as well as in cloud service providers with hundreds of VCE Vblock Systems in production at mission-critical data centers worldwide.
• VCE demand continues its strong growth in the most recent fiscal quarter and remains on track to reach a $1 billion revenue run rate.

Rajinder Gill, group finance director, Minor, Weir & Willis Ltd, said: "Our business needed a complete network and infrastructure upgrade in order to implement a new ERP system. VSPEX was an obvious fit for our environment and working closely with Synapse, we reduced our deployment and integration time. The prior validation work performed by Cisco, EMC and Synapse on VSPEX reduced our risk and complexity. Because of the tight integration between EMC, Cisco and VSPEX, we have decided to leverage the VSPEX platform as the primary core of our network and infrastructure for all current and future applications."

Indu Kodukula, Executive VP and CTO, SunGard Availability Service, said: "We want to devote our IT resources to developing new innovative automation tools for high-availability services, not building out infrastructure. The pre-integrated Vblock System architecture relieves our staff from having to make different vendors and solutions work together."

Joe Coxon, business development manager, Synapse, said: "Many of the customers we work with want to deploy a cloud, but aren’t quite sure how to do so quickly and easily. VSPEX is a powerful solution that helps us deploy clouds for our customers quickly and efficiently. By leveraging our expert understanding of client requirements, and Cisco’s and EMC’s industry-leading technologies, we can deliver a complete solution that matches our customers’ business needs."

Dave Hart, Executive VP and CTO, Presidio, said: "We deliver the ultimate in choice and flexibility to our customers by offering solutions based on EMC and Cisco technologies. We’re seeing a lot of demand for Vblock Systems with larger enterprise and service provider customers and VSPEX configurations allow us to reach a broader market. Both enable us to provide our unique expertise and differentiated value to help customers meet their business requirements."

Rick Snyder, VP, Global and Strategic Partners, Cisco, said: "Cisco and EMC partner every day in the engineering labs and in the field, helping customers around the world transform their data centers and strengthen their business. Through VCE we’ve unleashed market-moving innovation through the pre-engineered, pre-integrated Vblock Systems. Now, we’re working together to meet customer demand with Cisco Validated Designs for EMC VSPEX and aligned channel incentives to accelerate VSPEX adoption."  

Josh Kahn, VP, Solutions Marketing, EMC, said: "VCE enables customers to standardize on a converged infrastructure solution, dramatically accelerating their journey to the cloud. We are very pleased with VCE’s momentum and the benefits it is delivering to customers around the world. Building upon this, we are very excited to accelerate our partnership with Cisco on VSPEX to address market requirements for best-of-breed reference architectures offered exclusively via the channel. Channel partners are seeking solutions that reduce complexity and simplify the deployment for their customers."