CISCO AND EMC PARTNER

By K.C.Bishoppe

The Virtual Computing Environment alliance offers a bundled product, Vblock, consisting of Cisco's UCS server line and networking strength and EMC's storage combined through VMware's virtualization software.

The bundled product, Vblock, is being used by companies building private clouds. John Chambers, Cisco CEO says that Vblock improves utilization, power use and security by optimizing virtual resources through a "network-based architectural approach".

With a new service firm named Arcadia whose task is to help companies implement Vblock, Cisco is openly grasping for a larger piece of the virtualization market despite irritating and alienating other IT vendors that sell Cisco gear.