Fusion-io‘s hardware runs fast. A guest post published on SiliconANGLE not too long ago went over some of the real-life improvements that can be achieved in a storage environment using company’s flash solutions, and this value prop is exactly what got Fusion to where it is today.

It’s not only customers that identified this opportunity – partners did too, most recently networking giant Cisco. This morning the two firms sent out a release stating that Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) will start shipping with Fusion ioMemory under the hood sometime fall 2012:

“We are developing the next generation of fabric computing and customers recognize Fusion-io as a market leader in flash technology for the enterprise,” said Paul Perez, the chief technology officer of Cisco’s data center business. “With its strong track record of reliability and unique cut-through architecture, Fusion ioMemory will amplify the power of Cisco UCS Blade Servers to provide scalable application acceleration for Cisco customers.”

Cisco UCS Blade Servers based on the second generation ioMemory will arrive later this year, but it will only be a stepping stone year towards deeper integration, the two companies said. Flash is evolving very rapidly right now thanks in part to the interest shown by major vendors such as EMC, and now Cisco. But SSDs are certainly not the only thing on the latter’s to-do list.

The networking kingpin has been pursuing the unified infrastructure angle very aggressively as of late. Last week it announced a new integration solution that’s specifically designed to handle mobile traffic: the ASR 5500 platform. It centralizes signaling, data, in-line services and a number of other related processes in one place, and is as a result touted as a very advantageous addition to networking environments.