VCE and Cisco UCS – From the first Vblock to the best in the business

Five years ago this month, Cisco revolutionized the data center with the introduction of the Unified Computing System (UCS). Cisco’s innovative technology and strong partner ecosystem fueled impressive momentum throughout the year and led to a second pivotal moment in November 2009 when VCE was formally announced: 

Cisco and EMC, together with VMware, introduced the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, an unprecedented collaboration of three IT industry leaders – now known as VCE.

Vblocks from VCE converged Cisco UCS compute and Nexus networking, EMC storage and VMware virtualization, helping to create a new market category now known as converged infrastructure. Today, VCE leads the industry with more than 50% market share, according to Gartner, with Cisco UCS continuing to be a key element of our Vblock Systems. A recent report by IDC found that Vblock Systems provide customers with 5x faster deployment and 96% less downtime for half the cost of traditional systems. Other technology partners have also recognized the potential of UCS, allowing Cisco’s partner ecosystem to grow and thrive, yielding new capabilities for virtualization and applications.

The numerous partner attendees at this year’s Cisco Partner Summit have helped propel the success of UCS, and many have built their practices in whole or in part around the opportunities offered by UCS. It’s also reflected in their interest in Cisco’s next-generation Application Centric Infrastructure and its new cloud services.

This buzz and excitement isn’t surprising since Cisco now ranks second worldwide in x86 blade server revenue market share[1] and nearly 4,000 partners around the world sell Cisco UCS.

I would be remiss not to mention our own partners’ contributions to the continued success of VCE and Cisco UCS. Just like Cisco, VCE has a global partner network delivering products and services that improve business agility and speed time to market while dramatically reducing the cost of IT.

Cisco UCS is a cornerstone of the Vblock and represents VCE’s strategy of first and best integration of new investor company technologies. Since then, VCE has built a cadence of rapidly integrating new, innovative technologies released by Cisco, EMC and VMware into Vblock Systems.

As Cisco, EMC and VMware continue to innovate and improve their products, VCE Vblock Systems will continue to lead in the integration of their best-in-class components. And with the help of both of our partner networks, we’ll continue to lead the charge in providing solutions that will also contribute to our customers’ overall success.

[1] IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, Q3 2013, December 2013, Revenue Share

About the Author: Christopher Sullivan