With an eye towards the promising hyperconverged infrastructure market, NetApp Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. are fine-tuning a joint project that boosts computing hardware with all-flash technologies.

FlexPod, the next-generation converged infrastructure solution produced from a collaboration between NetApp and Cisco, has been gradually calibrated by both companies over the past eight years. The latest tweak was last June when the companies jointly announced that FlexPod SF would feature NetApp’s SolidFire all-flash and would include an all-Cisco hardware stack for the first time.

The announcement was significant because it showed how both companies are continuing to build a presence in the growing hyperconverged infrastructure market. One report showed FlexPod gaining market share to nearly 30 percent in 2017, with more than 8,400 global customers.

“FlexPod as a platform has blossomed as the cloud has grown,” said Siva Sivakumar (pictured, right), senior director of data center solutions at Cisco Systems. “We created what I would fundamentally say is a code platform for the data center.”

Sivakumar paid a visit to the set of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Cisco Live event in Barcelona, Spain, and spoke with co-hosts John Furrier (@furrier) and Stu Miniman (@stu). He was joined by Lee Howard (pictured, left), chief technology officer, global industry solutions and alliances, at NetApp, and they discussed growing customer interest in FlexPod technology and the role of flash arrays in the data center. (* Disclosure below.)

Interest in FlexPod is being driven by current enterprise response to features such as programmable agility, scale-out value and high-end performance. NetApp’s SolidFire storage enables fast virtual machine deployment, while Cisco Unified Computing System can deliver a significant number of business applications to users.

Speaking what developers want to hear

“It’s infrastructure as code, that’s what we are together,” Howard said. “It’s speaking the language that developers are wanting … and we’re marrying that up with the core tenets that made us an information technology powerhouse together.”

The integration of NetApp’s all-flash array as part of the FlexPod solution follows a movement in the information technology world toward a greater role for flash storage in the data center. Gartner has predicted that in less than three years, 50 percent of data centers will use flash arrays for big data workloads.

“With flash-enabled data centers, assets are staying longer on the books,” Howard said. “Having the versatility not just to live in today’s operating environment, but the operating environment of tomorrow is what’s really driving that mainstay of converged infrastructure.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Cisco Live Barcelona 2018. (* Disclosure: NetApp Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither NetApp nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE