Cisco Systems has formed an alliance with EMC to combine
computing equipment and services. The move is aimed at challenging
market leaders Hewlett-Packard and IBM.
The joint venture, to be called Acadia, will combine EMC storage
equipment, VMware management tools and Cisco networking and
computing products with dedicated services.
Cisco will benefit from EMC's alliance with VMware to boost the
networking company's ability to compete with HP, IBM and Dell,
which all sell equipment with VMware virtualisation software.
The move aims to capitalise on the trend of businesses
consolidating suppliers, virtualised environments and cloud-based
services, according to the
Financial Times.
Acadia will start with 140 employees, but most of the sales of
the new technology bundles will come from outside consulting firms
to promote Cisco's server business.
Analysts said the deal was timed to pre-empt HP's announcement
of new datacentre products that combine storage, computing power
and virtualisation.
Cisco is also following the growing trend of alliances, mergers
and acquisition many companies are using in the economic downturn
to boost their competitiveness.
Last week Cisco announced plans to
acquire security firm Scansafe and is currently
bidding for Norwegian videoconferencing firm Tandberg.