Cisco Delivers Next Wave of Unified Computing Innovation to

SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 4, 2014) - Cisco ( NASDAQ : CSCO ) today introduced significant innovations to its Unified Computing System ™ (UCS) business, delivering a broader and more powerful portfolio of technologies to help customers capitalize on rapidly changing landscapes in business and IT. 

Built on the architectural foundation, partnerships, and rapid customer adoption of UCS, Cisco's expanded portfolio addresses new market segments and use cases with the introduction of Cisco UCS M-Series Modular Servers for cloud-scale applications, and Cisco UCS Mini for small-scale and enterprise-edge environments. 

Additionally, an expansion of the current UCS portfolio brings new levels of power and scalability for a wide range of data center workloads by unveiling new fourth-generation UCS Rack and Blade Servers for application performance, and new UCS Director solutions to manage Big Data infrastructure workloads. 

"Rapid changes in the way applications are architected and delivered are being driven by the demands of Big Data, the Internet of Everything, mobility, video and cloud," said Paul Perez, vice president and general manager, Cisco UCS. "We are in a new world where data sets and application scale are rapidly growing, and the opportunities for businesses to capitalize on the deeper intelligence and faster decisions they afford are really taking off. With this expanded portfolio, Cisco is delivering the largest wave of computing innovation since the original introduction of UCS -- we are continually challenging and evolving how data center infrastructure should be architected and managed."

Cisco's Unified Computing innovation extends the company's strategy of application-centric data center infrastructure, an approach designed to future-proof and create advantage for customers amid continuous change in IT and business. The new technology innovations include:

Cloud-Scale Computing New Cisco UCS M-Series Modular Servers deliver breakthrough levels of operational efficiency for cloud service providers and enterprise customers who increasingly rely on scale-out application architectures. With exclusive Cisco System Link Technology, the UCS M-Series leapfrogs conventional designs, delivering the industry's first true disaggregated server architecture for leaner Cloud-scale infrastructure. This optimized approach can eliminate up to 95% of the system components duplicated in a traditional server design, which combined with the simplicity of UCS Management, can deliver up to 36% combined TCO savings ² .

In addition, the new Cisco UCS C3160 Rack Server , featuring high-capacity local disk storage, is ideal for distributed data analytics and object stores, unstructured data repositories, and media streaming and transcoding.

Edge-Scale Computing Unified Computing innovation is now optimized for remote sites, branch offices, and small IT environments with the introduction of Cisco UCS Mini . This all-in-one solution delivers servers, storage and networking in a compact form factor that is easy to deploy and operate, bringing the benefits of UCS simplicity and IT automation to a new segment of customers and up to a 36% advantage in total cost of ownership compared to traditional rack servers. ³ For customers operating large numbers of remote sites or branch offices, UCS systems management enables operations and policy control of distributed computing at a massive scale.

Data-Intensive Computing and Core Data Center Applications New Fourth-generation UCS Servers and UCS Director products deliver power and control to accelerate intensive data analytics and a wide range of applications for improved business outcomes, including:

• The UCS B200 M4 Blade Server, C220 M4  and C240 M4 Rack Servers, based on the future Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v3 product family, continue Cisco's tradition of world-record application performance across a diverse range of workloads.
• UCS Director Express for Big Data provides a single touch solution that automates deployment of Hadoop and provides a single management pane across both physical infrastructure and Hadoop software. It is integrated with major open-source distributions to ensure consistent and repeatable Hadoop UCS cluster configuration, relieving customers from manual operations.

According to a recent report by IDC, Cisco has achieved the ranking of No. 1 provider of x86 blade servers in the Americas, measured by revenue market share. ¹ Cisco also demonstrated the highest industry growth in the total worldwide server market according to the IDC report, with 39% revenue growth on a cumulative four quarter basis ending in calendar Q1 of 2014, a period where other vendors in the top five posted flat or declining results.

Watch the Cisco UCS Launch Event Broadcast On September 4 at 10:30 a.m. EST, during a launch event in New York City, Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior will headline a UCS Launch event, formally unveiling the new UCS portfolio expansion and Cisco's new operating model for the Internet of Everything. Warrior will be joined onstage by Cisco UCS GM Paul Perez and Major League Baseball Advanced Media CTO Joe Inzerillo, who will describe the role Cisco UCS has played in transforming their business into a profit center. The UCS Launch Event Broadcast can be viewed by registering here .

About Cisco UCS Cisco UCS, which unifies computing, networking, solid-state application acceleration technology and systems management into a single integrated architecture, has received strong support from customers since entering the server market five years ago. As of the end of FY14, Cisco UCS® has attracted over 36,500 customers, which is responsible for 30% year-over-year growth. Cisco's channel partners are fueling this rapid growth by driving 80% of all Cisco UCS sales, allowing these partners to capture burgeoning private and hybrid cloud opportunities.

Supporting Blog Posts from Partners

• Citrix and Cisco UCS: Driving App and Desktop Virtualization Performance to New Heights Orestes Melgarejo, senior director, CSP/SI Partners, Citrix
• Cisco/Cloudera Product Integration - making it even easier to deploy and manage Hadoop clusters Bala Venkatrao, director, Products, Cloudera
• Cisco Strengthens Big Data Support John Kreisa, vice president, Strategic Marketing, Hortonworks
• Building the Foundation for the Internet of Everything on Hadoop Steve Wooledge, vice president, Product Development, MapR
• FlexPod Innovation Grows with New Cisco UCS Technology Adam Fore, director, Virtualization and Cloud Solutions Marketing, NetApp
• Partnering to accelerate the path to hybrid cloud via open innovation Radhesh Balakrishnan, general manager, Virtualization and OpenStack, Red Hat
• SAP and Cisco address Big Data challenges and opportunities Bill Lawler, senior director, Technology Partner Marketing, SAP
• Cisco Updates Converged infrastructure Lineup New Improved Systems Craig Nelson, executive vice president, Services and Networking, Sirius
• VCE blog: New Cisco UCS Servers Push the Envelope - Again

Additional Resources

• Watch the webcast for the September 4 UCS Launch event : Powering Applications at Every Scale: The Next Wave of Unified Computing Innovation
• Read Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior's blog about the UCS announcement
• Read Cisco CIO Rebecca Jacoby's blog  on Fast IT
• Read the blog by Frank Palumbo, Cisco SVP of global data center sales, "Future-Proofing the Data Center in a World of Accelerated Change"
• Read the blog by John Growdon, Cisco senior director of channel business development for data center, "Partners Win Big with Cisco UCS Grand Slam"
• Read the blog by Todd Brannon, Cisco UCS director of product marketing, "The Bases are Loaded for a Cisco UCS Grand Slam"
• Learn more about Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS)
• Learn more about Cisco servers and Unified Computing
• Learn more about Cisco data center and virtualization solutions
• Read more: Cisco data center and cloud blogs

About Cisco Cisco ( NASDAQ : CSCO ) is the worldwide leader in IT that helps companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow by proving that amazing things can happen when you connect the previously unconnected. For ongoing news, please go to http://thenetwork.cisco.com .

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¹ IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, 2014 Q1, May 2014, Vendor Revenue Share ² Cisco Estimate Comparing 16 x M142 Compute Cartridges to 16 industry standard 1U rack mount servers over a 6 year, multi-refresh lifecycle. ³ Cisco Estimate Comparing UCS Mini with 8 x B200 M3 Blade Servers compared to 8 industry standard 1U rack mount servers based on the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v2 product family