Cisco and EMC have confirmed their plans to jointly develop cloud and data center products, announcing a new JV, Acadia.
Acadia will sell virtual data center solutions in partnership with EMC subsidiary VMware, Cisco said Cisco will provide the networking and server infrastructure, EMC the storage and security software and VMware will supply its virtualization technology.
The first products, named Vblock infrastructure packages, have already reached the market, with more to come in 2010.
The three companies shared a vision of private cloud computing as the future of enterprise IT and aim to establish a private cloud computing market, Cisco said.
To promote the switch to the cloud, they have formed the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, which will work with system integrators, resellers, service providers and ISVs to sell and deliver Vblock packages. Six SIs, including Tata Consulting and Wipro, have signed up so far, Cisco said.
Cisco chief John Chambers said Acadia offered a fresh “network-based architectural approach for optimizing virtual resources” in the data center.
Consultancy McKinsey estimates that the world spends more than €237 billion on data center products and services each year.
Cisco believes virtualization and private cloud technology can capture 20% of the total market by 2015, which by then will be worth around €57 billion.
VMware and Intel have also made minority investments in Acadia.