Cisco Systems Inc. and IBM Corp. on Monday announced they’ve updated their joint VersaStack portfolio with hybrid cloud capabilities and a new set of software-defined industry solutions.

VersaStack is a converged data center infrastructure solution that encompasses compute, network and storage and is designed for rapid deployment and fast execution. Using the solution, companies can automate data center processes and reduce complexities in order to accelerate the delivery of applications.

In order to add value to customers, it’s essential that enterprises are able to deploy applications and they use quickly and in a flexible manner. Key to this is having a facility that’s able to scale and manage data storage resources using software-defined technology. That’s what VersaStack is all about.

Cisco and IBM say VersaStack is now “hybrid cloud-ready” and able to support cloud-based applications. What this means is that clients can now build their own hybrid cloud solutions on the platform, and migrate apps and data between on-premises and cloud resources. The main idea is to lower the total cost of ownership and accelerate customer’s return on investment on their infrastructure, the companies said.

“Pressures facing today’s organizations are at the center of our VersaStack collaboration with Cisco,” said Ed Walsh, general manager of IBM Storage and Software Defined Infrastructure.

VersaStack has also been updated with infrastructure automation capabilities to accelerate the delivery of applications. This serves the purpose of simplifying and standardizing service delivery through infrastructure automation, the companies said. Other new capabilities include object storage support with IBM’s Cloud Object Storage service on Cisco UCS S3260, delivering a new hybrid cloud or on-premises solution for data intensive workloads, and spectrum software-defined storage with VersaStack and UCS, which the companies said improves the manageability, protection and storage of data.

Image: Cisco and IBM