LONDON, UK. - April 10, 2012
-To help more customers accelerate their transition to the
cloud,
Cisco and NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced plans to extend the
FlexPod® with a series of new pre-validated design
architectures priced and sized for smaller workloads. This new
FlexPod series is built on a
flexible, scalable, shared infrastructure
that combines computing, networking and storage solutions from
Cisco and NetApp. Additionally, to simplify and accelerate
implementation of cloud automation capabilities, Cisco and NetApp
have also validated several new management solutions from leading
software management vendors for all FlexPod design
architectures.
Highlights/ Key Facts
Entry-Level FlexPod
Solution
- Offering price and scale that's sized for business application
workloads with 500 to 1000 users, the entry-level FlexPod solution
allows customers to invest only in the infrastructure they require
and allow for simple and rapid scaling to meet growing demands as
their business needs change.
- Customers gain investment protection with the new entry-level
FlexPod solution, which easily scales to larger enterprises by
simply adding incremental capacity as their needs grow for larger
application workloads.
- The entry-level FlexPod for the first time combines the
NetApp® entry-level FAS2240 and the Cisco UCS™ C-Series
Cisco Nexus 5000® Switches, Cisco® Nexus 2232 Fabric
Extender, and Cisco UCS 6200 Series Fabric Interconnects.
- Similar to other FlexPod pre-validated solutions, this entry
level FlexPod provides greater flexibility and customer choice,
supporting multiple hypervisors and business applications to help
accelerate deployment of private clouds.
- Since Cisco and NetApp first announced FlexPod in November
2010, it has grown to become an extremely popular converged
infrastructure platform. FlexPod is available worldwide through
more than 500 FlexPod partners and more than 850 customers use
FlexPod for their data center infrastructure - representing more
than 400% growth in customer adoption in less than a year.
Flexible Management
Options
- Cisco and NetApp offer customers greater flexibility and choice
in how they manage their FlexPod solution. Management options
include:
Quotes
- Omer Mushahwar, senior associate at Torti Gallas and
Partners, Inc.
"As a global architecture, planning and urban design firm, our IT
infrastructure is a vital foundation in enabling us to create the
innovative residential, commercial, and institutional structures
our clients rely on us for. When we began looking for a solution to
replace a large part of our existing server infrastructure, we
sought three things: storage, speed, and virtualization. FlexPod
has freed us not only from aging equipment but a 100% physical
environment, which has allowed our infrastructure to take a huge
leap forward. Our FlexPod solution has helped us to prevent the
loss of $45,000 per day during power outages, streamline IT
management, improve service levels, position the company for
growth, and empowers us to serve our clients and generate revenue
without skipping a beat."
- Satinder Sethi, vice president, data center solutions,
Data Center Group, Cisco
"As customers balance their need to scale for their future growth
with simplified solutions that can be rapidly deployed, Cisco is
continuing to work with partners like NetApp to deliver
cost-effective pre-tested cloud infrastructure solutions to address
these needs. With NetApp, Cisco is working to increase
opportunities for partners to provide customers with the
scalability, flexibility, and manageability of Cisco UCS with
NetApp storage to achieve maximum return on investment."
- Chris Cummings, vice president, Products and Solutions
Marketing, NetApp
"Since the initial announcement of FlexPod more than a year ago,
the innovative stack approach leveraging best-of-breed technology
has achieved strong adoption and proven highly successful in
enabling partners and customers to simplify their transition to the
cloud. With today's announcement, Cisco and NetApp have evolved the
FlexPod architecture to address growing demand and deliver greater
value to an expanded range of customers."
- Gary Green, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances,
VMware
"Our continued collaboration with NetApp and Cisco on the FlexPod
architecture provides businesses of all sizes with trusted and
simplified data center solutions as they accelerate their journey
to the cloud. By utilizing the VMware cloud infrastructure on the
new entry-level FlexPod solution, organizations are empowered with
a greater level of flexibility and efficiency as their business
needs evolve."
Additional Resources
About Cisco
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), is the worldwide leader in networking that
transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate.
Information about Cisco can be found at www.cisco.com. For
ongoing news, please go to newsroom.cisco.com.
About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions
that accelerate business breakthroughs and achieve outstanding cost
efficiency. Discover our passion for helping companies around the
world go further, faster at www.netapp.com/uk/
Media Contact:
Champion Communications
+44 207 637 2587
NetApp@championcomms.com
NetApp, the NetApp logo, and Go further,
faster are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc. in
the United States and/or other countries. All other brands or
products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their
respective holders and should be treated as such. The use of the
word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership
between NetApp and any other company. Other names may be trademarks
of their respective owners.
VMware, VMware vCenter and VMware vCloud
are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the
United States and/or other jurisdictions. The use of the word
"partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership
relationship between VMware and any other company.
Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S.
and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found
at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks
mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of
the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between
Cisco and any other company.
Addendum: Partner Quote
Sheet
Cisco and NetApp collaborate with many technology partners, channel
partners, value-added resellers, and systems integrators to help
customers accelerate their transition to the cloud with FlexPod.
Here's what some of them are saying:
Raju Datla, chief executive officer
of Cloupia
"With FlexPod converged Infrastructure and Cloupia Unified
Infrastructure Controller, our customers gain full control of the
dynamic data center, flexibility and scalability in both virtual
and physical domains. We continue to experience strong demand for
Cloupia automation and orchestration support of the Cisco and
NetApp FlexPod platform from our customers and partners globally.
Our customers are able to manage rapid growth of today's Dynamic
data centers and are realizing overall TCO reductions and OpEx
savings using Cisco and NetApp validated Cloupia Unified
Infrastructure Controller (CUIC) for the FlexPod."
Nariman Teymourian, chief executive
officer of Gale Technologies
"Unified solutions such as FlexPod are gaining rapid acceptance as
private cloud deployments accelerate, and we are extremely pleased
to be one of the few vendors whose software has been validated by
Cisco and NetApp for management of the FlexPod data center
solution. Our GaleForce automation software brings ground-breaking
single-click simplicity to complex provisioning tasks that used to
take days to complete. We are pleased to bring our sophisticated
cloud management features now to FlexPod environments."
Richard Heard, president, Insight
Investments, LLC
"Insight Integrated Systems has a strong and successful
relationship with NetApp, VMware and Cisco. By leveraging FlexPod
technology we provide our enterprise customers with highly
specialized, virtualization, managed services and cloud computing
solutions. The new FlexPod capabilities will enable us to help our
mid-size business customers' transition to the cloud with a quick
and effective way to deploy new IT resources."
Jed Ayres, senior vice president,
Partner Management and Marketing, MCPc
"At MCPc, our clients are looking for solutions to empower their
employees to work from anywhere and on any device-all in a
well-managed, secure environment. As a result we developed the
anyplace workspace™ architecture powered by NetApp FlexPod.
This validated solution is an end-to-end systems approach that
delivers the next generation virtual workspace by unifying virtual
desktops, voice and video. FlexPod combines the very best in
networking, computing and storage and has allowed our customers to
reduce risk, increase efficiencies and deliver the workspace of the
future well ahead of their competitors."
Roger Sels, manager, Business
Development, Uptime
"The FlexPod solution has turned out to be a classic win-win
situation. We have seen customers across all industries gain new
levels of performance to raise their business momentum. And our own
business has grown as well as the solution supports customers
through its great cost efficiency, application versatility, and
contribution to business agility. We are looking forwarded to the
new FlexPod offering as it opens new opportunities and market
spaces. In fact, the new entry-level FlexPod is a smart move and we
are excited to explore new customers and use cases."