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In November 2009 Cisco, EMC and VMware announced a massive alliance dubbed Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition that shook the server market and impacted on the strategy of top players like HP, Oracle, Dell, HDS and others.
Just a few months later, while the three are still busy forming the consulting arm Acadia, Cisco and VMware already intensify their already tight partnership, announcing a new joint channel program.
The initiative of course targets partners of both companies and encourage them to sell the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) and the Nexus 1000V with VMware vSphere through a number of benefits like free online training, reduction in the number of VMware certifications required, cheap bundles, discounted physical demo equipment and free online demo equipment, and financial help to purchase hardware.
The program doesn’t seem any different from the many others that partners can have in the IT world, yet it’s extremely interesting to see how Cisco is pushing forward the adoption of VMware solutions among its partners and how it is leveraging virtualization to enter the data centers where HP, Dell and IBM are dominant.