Cisco and EMC introduced new joint reference architectures, aligned channel partner incentives, and integrated customer support to speed customers' path to the cloud.

Building on a decade-long partnership, Cisco and EMC now provide enterprise and service provider customers with an unmatched menu of options to build cloud infrastructure. The "three paths to the cloud" include:

Implement a custom-designed infrastructure with best-of-breed products

Install validated, easy-to-deploy reference architectures with Cisco solutions for EMC VSPEX™ Proven Purchase a pre-integrated converged infrastructure with VCE Vblock System.

Partnership Highlights:

The two new Cisco Validated Designs (CVD) for EMC VSPEX are unified computing reference architectures tailored to SMB and mid-market customers. Designed to accelerate the journey to the private cloud, the CVDs are Cisco Solutions for EMC VSPEX for Microsoft Hyper-V Architectures and Cisco Solutions for EMC VSPEX for VMware vSphere 5.0 Architectures.

More than 200 Cisco and EMC Velocity channel partners within the global VSPEX community have been trained to resell and deploy EMC VSPEX with Cisco Unified Data Center.

Cisco and EMC have also aligned their channel incentive structures to simplify the process of accruing incentives and boost partner profitability.

Cisco and EMC have implemented a customer support framework for VSPEX for collaborative case management.

VCE — Cisco and EMC's joint venture with VMware — pioneered a groundbreaking integrated data center offering with end-to-end vendor visibility, enabling the leading time-to-market and one of the lowest TCO for converged cloud infrastructure.

VCE's fully productized converged infrastructure standardizes processes and life cycle management to significantly improve application availability and enable VCE's unique seamless support experience.

VCE continues to gain traction in enterprise data centers as well as in cloud service providers with hundreds of VCE Vblock Systems in production at mission-critical data centers worldwide.

VCE demand continues its strong growth in the most recent fiscal quarter and remains on track to reach a $1 billion revenue run rate.