Cisco and IBM extend VersaStack to hybrid cloud, software-defined storage
Cisco and IBM have announced a series of new solutions for their converged infrastructure VersaStack product to include software-defined storage and hybrid cloud capabilities.
The two companies, which made the announcement at Cisco Live Melbourne on Wednesday, said the extension will allow for greater application automation through VersaStack, which was jointly developed by IBM and Cisco.
Latest Australian news
"Extending our partnership with IBM ... we launched VersaStack two years ago, we've seen great success on that," said Satinder Sethi, VP of Data Centre and Cloud Solutions for Cisco.
"This is about launching the next generation of VersaStack with a lot of innovation around software-defined storage, with innovations around automation, and truly delivering a hybrid IT platform for VersaStack.
"It leverages a lot of the capabilities from software-defined storage that are coming from IBM, and the enterprise cloud suite which provides IaaS services for private cloud, as well as integration with hybrid from Cisco."
The newly extended product includes a mix of Cisco CloudCentrer and IBM Copy Data Management for hybrid cloud, including IBM Bluemix; as well as spectrum software-defined storage using VersaStack and Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS).
"These additions to VersaStack create an environment well suited for both traditional and emerging scale-out applications, addressing our customer needs in a simplified way," said Liz Centoni, senior VP of Cisco Computing Systems Product Group.
"The expanded VersaStack portfolio delivers extensive IT automation, hybrid cloud versatility for applications and data, support for object storage easily scaling into multi-petabyte configurations, and the ability to cut costs by improving efficiency, manageability, and protection," IBM Storage and Software Defined Infrastructure general manager Ed Walsh added.
Cisco has also been working to embed IBM's Watson cognitive computing into its collaboration tools -- including WebEx and Spark -- following the two companies signing an Internet of Things agreement last year.
Earlier this week, Cisco also added more integration and support for its HyperFlex converged system to integrate Cisco's HX Data Platform -- a distributed file system for hyperconverged clusters -- as well as support for high-capacity all-flash nodes and for 40Gbps UCS fabric networking.
Cisco also added a native replication feature; integration with Cisco ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite CloudCenter; and infrastructure as a service to HyperFlex.
Disclosure: Corinne Reichert travelled to Cisco Live in Melbourne as a guest of Cisco