In a widely anticipated announcement this week that will pit the world’s largest maker of computer networking gear against several erstwhile partners, Cisco Systems Inc. unveiled a new data center architecture that includes compute, network, storage access and virtualization resources in a single rackable system.

 

Officials at the San Jose, California-based IT bellwether say the so-called “Unified Computing System” is designed to reduce IT infrastructure costs, leverage existing IT investments and allow enterprise customers to build an agile data center that they can easily extend for future growth.

 

According to Mario Mazzola, senior vice president of Cisco’s (News - Alert) server access and virtualization business unit, the virtual machine has become the new atomic building block of the data center, creating new challenges and opportunities with the potential to transform the computing environment and deliver significant benefits.

 

“Taking advantage of this architectural shift in the data center, we developed a unique new computing model that transforms the data center into a dynamic IT environment with the power to increase productivity, improve business agility and drive the benefits of virtualization to an entirely new level,” Mazzola said.

 

The move marks an important – and hotly debated – step into a new arena for Cisco, which in the past has introduced features such as security, application optimization and adaptation of multimedia to fit different clients and purposes.

 

Yet as revenues from its core switching and routing businesses wane – the company was forced into a week-long shut-down at the end of last year – Cisco is exploring consumer electronics and, led by Chief Executive Officer John Chambers (News - Alert), telepresence high-definition video conferencing.

 

The company’s first server computer encroaches on the turf of traditional company partners – such as IBM, Dell and HP – which have sold billions of dollars of computers over the years that include Cisco’s core networking products.

 

But according to a story by Ashlee Vance of the New York Times, Chambers said, “What we are really talking about here is catching the next market evolution.”

 

The announcement is one of several that Cisco made on Monday that extend the company’s data center portfolio and overall “Data Center 3.0 strategy.”

 

Specifically, Cisco introduced its so-called “UCS B-Series blades” (pictured right), which are based on upcoming Intel (News - Alert) Nehalem processors and incorporate extended memory technology for applications with large data sets.

 

In seeking software partners to provide technology for its new system, Cisco is teaming up with Microsoft Corp, VMware and BMC.

 

Specifically, Cisco will support Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology and Microsoft (News - Alert) SQL Server 2008 as part of the Unified Computing System. VMware will bring virtualization technology to the new system and BMC will offer its resource-management software.

 

Officials at Cisco say tthe Unified Computing System reduces total cost of ownership – up to 20 percent reduction in capital expenditures and 30 percent in operational expenditures – and also improves energy efficiency by reducing power and cooling costs.

 

Analysts cited by Cisco say the new system offers a new approach to solve data center challenges by offering a single holistic solution with integrated management and the critical support necessary for scaling virtualization.

 

According to Vernon Turner, senior vice president of enterprise infrastructure, consumer and telecom research at IDC, by increasing the performance and scale of virtualized environments while improving the ability to control and manage virtual workloads, “this solution has the potential to deliver the full benefits of virtualization across the data center to increase productivity and agility and reduce IT costs.”