New integrated data center solutions launched by Cisco Systems and IBM last week under an expanded partnership deal will help speed deployment times and ease management of on-demand environments, VARs said.
The new solutions, which include a Cisco Gigabit Ethernet Layer 2 switch module for IBM's eServer BladeCenter, will round out IBM's offerings and help increase comfort levels by providing preintegrated, pretested equipment, said Chris Swahn, president of sales at Merrimack, N.H.-based Amherst Technologies.
"This is a big win for IBM," Swahn said. The partnership propels IBM past Hewlett-Packard, which has not integrated its own ProCurve network equipment into its autonomic computing strategy, Swahn said.
 Cisco's Pierre-Paul Allard says the new products reduce deployment risks. |
In expansion of their long-standing strategic alliance, Cisco and IBM said they are bringing together their server, storage, networking and management products to provide an integrated data center automation platform.
"It takes away a huge amount of risk for deployments in the data center," said Pierre-Paul Allard, vice president of worldwide enterprise marketing at Cisco, San Jose, Calif. "It eliminates the human error factor, provides better profitability for our partners and saves time and money."
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