Two Silicon Valley giants, Cisco Systems and NetApp Inc., are celebrating three years of collaboration in what has become a successful partnership for both companies.

I had the pleasure of visiting the Cisco studios in Silicon Valley to record a video conversation on FlexPod for Enterprise and Service Provider clouds with executives Patrick Rodgers, VP of Datacenter Platform of Netapp and Jim McCue, VP UCS Marketing, of Cisco.  Video embedded below.

NetApp Cisco Relationship – Cloud Tech For Enterprises & Service Providers

Over the past three years their relationship has evolved immensely, in particular around the FelxPod Component which includes FlexPod DataCenter, FlexPod Express and FlexPod Select.

FlexPod recently received a #1 ranking by IDC, International Data Corporation, in Integrated Infrastructure Market Share.

Together, Cisco Systems and NetApp, are doubling new installations year over year, now boasting more than 3,000 customers globally.

FlexPod Enhancements Announced

To commemorate their successful partnership they are announcing several enhancements to their FlexPod solutions.

1. FlexPod Data Center with NetApp Metrocluster

What is means: Customers will now have full end to end DR capability that allows NetApp to support continuous availability for customers that are building mission critical applications in deployments built on FlexPod.

2. Flexpod Data Center with the Cisco Virtualized Multi-Service Data Center 2.3

What it means: A new reference architecture has been built to help Cloud providers more easily design and implement systems to deliver cloud services. Overall this will simplify the design and implementation of these integrated infrastructure solutions

3. Further integration of UCS 4.1 with NetApp Clustered Data OnTAP

What it means: New integrations with UCS director and the intelligent automation for cloud will provide automation and service catalogs to help customers move towards delivering cloud services. This allows corporate IT to maximize benefits because it’s infrastructure can be commissioned within minutes in response to changes in demand. Additionally, Cisco UCS director views flexpod as a single system and allows customers to rapidly deploy FlexPod by leveraging the single element managers. Flexpod now provides turn-key infrastructure management with UCS director and the unified information management solution that enhances support for NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP.

4. Citrix is now a partner in the Flexpod Cooperative Support Program

What it means: Customers will now have have direct access to Cisco, NetApp and Citrix engineers who are trained to address any issues customers might have from an operational standpoint.

In regards to the announcement Jim McHugh, Vice President of UCS Marketing said, “The addition means that we can deliver enhanced performance for any virtualized or cloud based application. It is an unbeatable combination and we are sure our customers are going to love it.”

Patrick Rogers, Vice President, Solutions and Integration Group, echoed McHugh’s pleasure with the recent advancements in FlexPod. “These solutions will save customers time in both implementation and on-going expense in managing and operating these infrastructures” Rogers said.

These advancements in Flexpod technology will enable the platform to exceed the needs of the most demanding private and public cloud deployments. The newest Flexpod deployments will feature Cisco UCS built on Intel’s Ivory Bridge Chipset.