Today on our live show theCube, Cisco SVP Global Strategic Partners Wendy Bahr said that one of the keys to the success of Cisco’s Unified Computing System is the embrace of orchestration and automation through integration with BMC, CA and Cisco’s own UCS Manager. “The early adopters get an added lift of having both the hardware and software expertise,” she said.

Yesterday I wrote about the importance of converged infrastructure, and the sorts of automation tools that can be baked in like Cisco’s process orchestrator and HP Matrix Operating Environment are great examples.

UCS has certainly come a long way. Last year after Cisco announced a massive layoff, I wrote:

Big data and cloud computing are changing organizations’ networking needs. Companies like Dell, HP and Oracle have been taking advantage of this. Cisco hasn’t completely missed the cloud ball – it has its Unified Computing System. But there’s a perception that while it was screwing around with video, Cisco was ceding the cloud to other vendors. Cisco was expanding into other markets in a futile attempt to please investors and in so doing it may have done serious damage to its core business.

Although I got called out in the comments for making too broad a statement about “the cloud,” my point was that Dell, HP and Oracle were moving into the network market via converged infrastructure offerings while Cisco was expanding into unrelated areas like video and social software. But it looks like my cynicism was unwarranted. According to Synergy Research Group, HP and IBM lead the cloud computing equipment market, but Cisco is closing the gap with 23% year-over-year improvement in cloud equipment revenue. Knuckling down on enterprise seems to be working for Cisco.

Bahr also credited Cisco’s 50,000 partner channel ecosystem for the company’s success in converged infrastructure. Bahr says the channel partners were quick to embrace Unified Computing System (UCS).