Cisco growing into the server market - Westcon
When Cisco came out with its Unified Computing System (UCS) in 2009, there was plenty of scepticism about how the company would do by venturing into the server landscape.
Unlike other server vendors, Cisco’s UCS launch was from a fresh-fields approach that recognised the industry’s shift towards server virtualization and consolidation. Not tied down by legacy architectures they were able to create something innovative and industry changing.
Cisco’s announcement in January (2012) that the company passed the 10,000 customer milestone for UCS sales laid many of those doubts to rest. Furthermore, Cisco has gone from not being a server player, to holding down the number three spot globally, ahead of Dell and behind HP and IBM.
With IDC rating blades as the fastest growing server segment during the next several years, this bodes well for Cisco's growing presence in the marketplace.
The team at WestconGroup NZ have seen the momentum that Cisco UCS is gaining in their customer base and the NZ market. They've developed a strategic focus with Cisco around the UCS portfolio to provide our partners with experience, knowledge, access to skilled technical resource, UCS demos and equipment. We protect our partners by maximising programmes around pricing and discounts.
"Our role in the channel is as a value-added distributor with a global network of specialty resellers, systems integrators and service providers. We pride ourselves on innovation and have a proven route to market for products and services, from the vendor through to the end-user customer." says Westcon.
Collaboration is instrumental in the Cisco success as it can extent new sales and solution opportunities by leveraging validated designs with other leading vendors such as EMC, Netapp, Microsoft, VMware, SAP & Oracle just to name a few.
Within that eco-system the VCE Company has become a special focus for Westcon. VCE is made up of VMware, Cisco and EMC.
VCE is a joint venture between Cisco and the EMC Corporation with additional investments from VMware and Intel Corporation. They manufacture converged infrastructure called VBlock which integrates industry leading virtualization, networking, computing, storage, security, and management technologies to deliver VBlock Infrastructure Platforms - a unique, converged infrastructure that supports a vast array of business critical applications.
Westcon is the only VCE and VBlock value add distributor in NZ. In most cases the VBlock is scaled for environments much larger than we experience here in NZ, thus Westcon developed the VCube to meet the needs of the NZ market and it is already attracting a lot of interest from partners.
The VCube is aimed at the IT generalist and provide all of the necessary components for a complete virtualisation platform. Whether a customer is taking his/her first step into virtualisation or has plans for a fully virtualised infrastructure then VCube is a great place to start.
VCube combines VMware vSphere, Cisco Unified Computing Systems and network connectivity and EMC VNX series of unified storage. Whether a customer is starting with virtualization or has plans for a fully virtualized infrastructure, VCube can meet existing requirements and scale for future growth.
For more information or a demonstration around the VCube capabilities please contact Ross or Troy from the Cisco team at Westcon by email or 09 415 6220.
