VCE has come a long way in a short time, surpassing $1 billion in annual sales less than six years after its launch on the back of rapidly growing demand for simplicity and full-stack integration. It’s the combination of EMC, VMware and Cisco set out to deliver when they established the joint venture in November 2009, a goal that Wikibon senior analyst Stu Miniman says has been successfully met.

VCE stitches individual components from its backers into a cohesive whole that provides a flexible platform for running enterprise applications and cloud services, Miniman highlights in his latest market report. The firm has struck a unique balance between standardization and agility with its flagship Vblock solution, he continues, enabling IT organizations to free up resources normally spent on keeping the lights on for driving tangible business value.

With 800 customers in 57 countries, VCE is poised to take on a central role in the software-defined data center and secure a much-needed beachhead for EMC and Cisco in the process. “VCE is hardly a startup, it has over 1400 employees with a singular mission with proven execution capabilities that move faster than the parent companies,” Miniman writes. “VCE has helped Cisco gain critical wins for UCS in large environments that Cisco would have challenges winning and has helped EMC differentiate from the many storage competitors by creating high value solutions.”

VCE has the potential to serve as a launchpad for EMC’s ViPR software-defined storage platform and Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure, according to Miniman. VMware’s acquisition of Nicira has put tension on the alliance, but he believes there is little risk of the joint venture disbanding so long as it continues on its current growth trajectory. And at present, it shows no signs of slowing down. Large enterprises, particularly Fortune 1000 companies, are flocking to converged infrastructure as the architecture continues to prove itself in the field. Miniman advises IT practitioners to turn to peers for information on the cost savings and operational benefits to be had from using the technology.

See Miniman’s entire analysis in the video below.