The joint project will use the Integrated Cloud Delivery Platform to target telcos, large and midrange-sized independent applications providers and storage providers -- among others.
Networker Cisco Systems and data management provider BMC Software, using their
2009 Unified Computing System partnership
as home base, Dec. 6 announced a second strategic alliance to develop a
new, generically named cloud system for large-scale, multitenant
infrastructures.
The joint development partnership will use the Integrated Cloud
Delivery Platform to target telcos, large and midrange-size
independent applications providers, cloud storage providers,
high-traffic social media and retail Websites, and a number of other
enterprises.
Cloud computing providers will use the ICDP to deploy services running
on an infrastructure that spans a range of data center networks,
computing systems, storage and applications.
The two companies will align their product development roadmaps and
technology architectures to offer customers an automated system to
deploy cloud services, Cisco Vice President of Service Provider Systems
Paul Sanchirico, told eWEEK.
The ICDP is expected to begin shipping sometime in early 2011, Sanchirico said
"This alliance combines Cisco's expertise in networking and computing
with BMC's expertise in cloud management and business service
management to offer customers all the elements needed to quickly deploy
cloud services," Sanchirico said.
Cisco's UCS at heart of the matter
The UCS, which is at the heart of these new systems, consists of a
proprietary Cisco data center architecture, Cisco-made servers and a
set of management software and services from BMC based on Intel's
quad-core Nehalem Xeon processors.
Cisco partners are providing all hardware and software that aren't in
the networking realm; storage is primarily offered by marketplace
enemies EMC and NetApp, which each have long-term partnerships with
Cisco.
"The Cisco-BMC platform provides full-stack provisioning for deployment
of services, and you can do this in minutes rather than hours or days,
thanks to preconfiguration [meaning drop-down menus and wizards]," Paul
Avenant, senior vice president of products and strategy for enterprise
service management at BMC, told eWEEK. "Although if you want to
use a CLI [command-line programming interface], that's OK, too.
"This has complete cloud lifecycle management, including how you request a service to how you configure and provision it."
Avenant said it is built upon "new levels of integration" between BMC's
Cloud LifeCycle Management, a full-service cloud-computing software
orchestration and management package, and Cisco's UCS.
The ICDP will eliminate many of the complex manual steps required to set up and provision a cloud-computing service.
"Cloud-scale operations require integrated, automated provisioning,
management and monitoring across infrastructure and applications," said
Mary Johnston Turner, research director of Enterprise Systems
Management for IDC.
"Cisco and BMC's collaboration provides service providers and
enterprise customers with a pre-integrated option to enable the rapid
launch and efficient ongoing support of cloud environments."
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Chris Preimesberger was named Editor-in-Chief of Features & Analysis at eWEEK in November 2011. Previously he served eWEEK as Senior Writer, covering a range of IT sectors that include data center systems, cloud computing, storage, virtualization, green IT, e-discovery and IT governance. His blog, Storage Station, is considered a go-to information source. Chris won a national Folio Award for magazine writing in November 2011 for a cover story on Salesforce.com and CEO-founder Marc Benioff, and he has served as a judge for the SIIA Codie Awards since 2005. In previous IT journalism, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. His diverse resume also includes: sportswriter for the Los Angeles Daily News, covering NCAA and NBA basketball, television critic for the Palo Alto Times Tribune, and Sports Information Director at Stanford University. He has served as a correspondent for The Associated Press, covering Stanford and NCAA tournament basketball, since 1983. He has covered a number of major events, including the 1984 Democratic National Convention, a Presidential press conference at the White House in 1993, the Emmy Awards (three times), two Rose Bowls, the Fiesta Bowl, several NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments, a Formula One Grand Prix auto race, a heavyweight boxing championship bout (Ali vs. Spinks, 1978), and the 1985 Super Bowl. A 1975 graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., Chris has won more than a dozen regional and national awards for his work. He and his wife, Rebecca, have four children and reside in Redwood City, Calif.Follow on Twitter: editingwhiz
