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Cisco, EMC coalition expands data center portfolio

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Lindsay Posted in Cisco, Tech Leave a comment

Cisco, EMC coalition expands data center portfolio
VCE unveils two low-end converged infrastructure systems, SAP optimization, management software

VCE, the data center coalition formed by Cisco, EMC and VMware, this week expanded its product portfolio with low-end versions of its integrated infrastructure system, certification to run SAP software and new management capabilities.

The new offerings are intended to address markets VCE has not addressed before. The coalition was formed in 2009 to sell prepackaged Cisco servers and switches, EMC storage and VMware virtualization in an effort to accelerate the adoption of cloud computing infrastructure.

VCE’s revenue in 2011 was $600 million, according to Gartner. The coalition is now on a $1 billion run rate and had a 57% share of the $388 million integrated infrastructure market in the second quarter of 2012, according to Gartner.

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The future of VCE has come under speculation, however, given that the three investor companies are taking an increasingly competitive path individually. Indeed, Gartner states in a November 2012 report on the integrated infrastructure market that “the success of (VCE) is largely dependent on the interests of those individual companies remaining aligned.”

VCE executives maintain that they continue to have the full commitment of the investor companies even though individually they become more competitive or divergent.

Up to now, VCE sold high-end versions of this integrated infrastructure with an average selling price (ASP) of around $2 million, according to analysts. The products unveiled this week bring that system to smaller data centers, and branch and remote offices with an ASP believed to be below $500,000.

They include the Vblock System 200 and 100. Vblock System 200 is targeted at midsize data centers and service provider managed customer premises. The Vblock System 100 is aimed at remote office/branch office deployments.

Vblock System 200 can function as the sole core IT infrastructure for a midsize data center as well as an IT development environment, VCE says. Vblock System 200 supports the processing, sharing and storage of applications such as Exchange for Messaging, VMware Virtual Desktop Integration, Microsoft SharePoint and Cisco’s Unified Communications collaboration, databases, Web/file sharing, domain services and print servers.

Vblock System 100 is designed to extend standard business applications from the enterprise data center to the remote site. Such applications include Exchange for Messaging, VMware Virtual Desktop Integration, Microsoft SharePoint and Cisco’s Unified Communications, as well as small databases and Web/file sharing and print servers.

“It will enable us to start to build a distributed data center infrastructure with the same consistent converged infrastructure as the baseline [core headquarters data center],” says VCE CEO Praveen Akkiraju.

Cisco is also allied with EMC storage rival NetApp in addressing the integrated systems market for data center infrastructure. Their FlexPod reference architecture was recently broadened to address branch office requirements.

For application optimization, VCE unveiled a specialized Vblock system for the SAP HANA computing and database platform. This is the first such Vblock system optimized for core enterprise workloads, VCE says.

Vblock Specialized System SAP HANA has received SAP HANA certification, which VCE says enables enterprises to compute, analyze and transact large amounts of data in real-time, either on-premises or via the cloud, using the Vblock converged infrastructure system. Deploying traditional SAP software projects on Vblock systems can reduce the time required to provision new SAP application servers from days or weeks to minutes, VCE claims.

VCE also says its Vblock system can produce up to 50% better SAP database and application performance.

Oracle is the leading vendor in the integrated workload segment of the data center infrastructure market, according to Gartner, with revenue growing almost 78% in the second quarter of 2012. Up to now, VCE did not participate in this market, which also includes IBM and HP.

For management, VCE rolled out VCE Vision Intelligent Operations. This application enables converged infrastructure management for the entire Vblock portfolio, acting as a mediation layer between Vblock systems and existing data center management tools.

Vision Intelligent Operations informs those tools about Vblock systems by performing discovery to provide a “single-objective perspective” on Vblock systems. The software has native integration with VMware’s virtualization and cloud management portfolio and also supports API-enabled integration into other industry management toolsets.

“It makes Vblock interact with management and orchestration systems, as well as applications,” Akkiraju says. “It makes Vblock workload aware.”

Vblock System 100 is now available through VCE and its partners. Vblock System 200 is in early customer shipment and is targeted for general availability in the second quarter.

VCE Vision Intelligent Operations and Vblock Specialized System SAP HANA are in early customer shipment and are also targeted for general availability in the second quarter.

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Cisco gets closer to NetApp, further from VCE

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Lindsay Posted in Cisco Leave a comment

Expanded alliance for Cisco is deeper, broader than that with EMC, VMware

Appearing to further distance itself from VCE coalition partners EMC and VMware, Cisco this week expanded collaboration with storage titan NetApp to deepen integration and market reach.

Cisco and NetApp, a storage rival of EMC’s, are stretching their alliance around the FlexPod architecture — – which combines Cisco data center switches and servers, NetApp FAS storage systems, and partner applications and devices — to the branch office and public cloud. Their alliance already serves the data center and private cloud markets. The expanded partnership includes efforts in technology integration, system development and market collaboration around FlexPod architectures available in a variety of configurations and packages that support an array of vendors’ virtualization hypervisors.

The VCE coalition Cisco formed almost four years ago with EMC and VMware supports VMware virtualization and orchestration in a pre-configured vBlock footprint aimed predominantly at data centers and private clouds, says Jim McHugh, vice president of marketing for Cisco. VCE is believed to be splintering as the three founding companies – Cisco, EMC and VMware – become increasingly competitive and overlapping in an effort to become a single source of IT and cloud infrastructure.

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McHugh, however, dismissed any notion that the expanded NetApp partnership diminishes the emphasis or activity on VCE.

“Absolutely not,” he says, when asked if the broadened NetApp collaboration signaled an end to VCE. “It’s complementary to that.”

McHugh says Cisco values all partnerships and that VCE is a “very particular, very specific” use case: data centers and private clouds. The NetApp engagement includes branch offices and public clouds, he says, and involves a multi-site data center and multi-hypervisor strategy.

The extended activity will include deeper integration across computing, networking, storage and orchestration components of FlexPod, combined with broader support for FlexPod partners.

The deepened integration includes the ability of FlexPod configurations to manage up to 10,000 servers, allow organizations to aggregate several FlexPod racks, and enable multi-hop Fibre Channel over Ethernet. This is intended to enable service provider and distributed enterprise infrastructures to scale.

The FlexPod architecture will also now support Cisco UCS Manager 2.1, UCS Central and Cisco’s recently acquired Cloupia data center orchestration and automation products. FlexPod will also support Cisco’s Intelligent Automation for Cloud management system. FlexPod can also now be orchestrated by partner applications such as Microsoft System Center and Citrix CloudStack, the companies said.

Cisco and NetApp will also integrate Flash technologies at the host and storage levels to accelerate performance. At the server, applications running on Flash-optimized Cisco UCS can be further accelerated with NetApp Flash Accel, while at the controller and array levels, technologies such as NetApp Flash Cache and Flash Pools can be used to access cached data faster, the companies say.

For the branch office, Cisco and NetApp are extending the capabilities of ExpressPod to meet the compute, network and storage needs of remote sites. ExpressPod is a converged infrastructure configuration similar to FlexPod, but designed for the branch office. It is upgradable to and interoperable with FlexPod so branch offices can take advantage of virtualization and cloud computing for resource efficiency and cost reduction. ExpressPod includes support for VMware VSphere and will soon include support for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, the companies say.

For cloud service providers, Cisco and NetApp are developing a FlexPod capable of handling multi-data center service provider architectures. The development will combine NetApp Clustered ONTAP and NetApp FAS storage systems with Cisco UCS servers and Nexus 7000 switches to create pools of server and storage resources that can be scaled up or down, depending on application requirements.

These architectures will include common management and orchestration technologies, the companies say, as well as support for open source cloud computing technologies such as CloudStack and OpenStack.

Expanded partner support includes the addition of more validated business and private cloud applications for the data center. These include Oracle Database and applications, SAP Business Intelligence and SAP HANA applications, and Microsoft Private Cloud and Citrix CloudPlatform private cloud offerings.

And in addition to branch offices and public clouds, Cisco and NetApp will attempt to simplify deployment, management and orchestration of the FlexPod architecture for consumer-to-enterprise and cloud-to-cloud connectivity.

FlexPod has more than 2,100 customers and over 700 channel partners, the companies say.

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Cisco, EMC, VMware unite behind big data, cloud training initiative

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Lindsay Posted in Cisco, Jobs, Tech

New training bundles are organized around specific disciplines and job roles, including cloud architect and data scientist

As the IT silos come down, tech pros need to beef up their skills to stay relevant and maximize the business benefits of cloud computing, virtualization, unified networking and big data, according to Cisco and EMC, which have teamed to offer training targeted at tech’s hottest data center disciplines.

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New job roles are emerging as companies adopt converged infrastructures, shift to cloud architectures, and wrangle with massive data stores, and enterprises need to prepare the IT workforce to handle their new roles, the vendors say.

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“There’s some confusion around cloud, cloud-based services, and how to leverage the cloud as part of an overall organizational transformation. How do you move from classical data centers to virtual data centers to cloud-based data centers?” says Anthony Bryant, director of learning services at Learning@Cisco. “There’s also confusion around how to transform the technical talent within this arena.”

Unveiled this week, the training initiative from Cisco and EMC also includes resources from VMware. Their joint education bundles provide courseware and certifications related to cloud architecture, virtualization, storage, data center networking and data science. The bundles are organized around specific disciplines and job roles, including cloud architect, systems administrator, backup and recovery, data center network design and data scientist.

“The lines between the traditional silos, or pillars, in IT are starting to blur” in today’s IT-as-a-service, cloud-based data center environments, says Alok Shrivastava, senior director of education services at EMC. “They have to, because one group or one function making a decision impacts everybody else,” he says. “You might be a system admin or DBA or network admin, and you need to understand what’s going on across the different technology areas in the data center.”

In the Cisco/EMC/VMware training model, there’s a path associated with each discipline that prescribes the required courses to become proficient. For instance, the systems administrator path requires these courses: Cloud Infrastructure and Services, VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage, and Cisco Data Center Unified Computing Implementation (DCUCI). Someone aspiring to be a data center network architect could follow a learning path that includes these courses: EMC Cloud Infrastructure and Services, Cisco Data Center Unified Fabric (DCUFD), and Configuring Cisco Nexus Data Center (CCNDC).

IT pros can opt to purchase courses by the bundle or individually. The training is delivered via instructor-led courses, instructor-led video training, or, in certain cases, on-site instruction at a customer premises.

From the perspective of a CIO of a 1,000-person IT organization, “the success of cloud transformation depends on the team. Beyond the technologies, unless the team has bought into it and has developed new skill sets, the project could very well fail,” Shrivastava says. “It becomes extremely critical for CIOs to transform the workforce.”