“Through our long-standing collaboration with Cisco, we are enabling customers to tap deep into the power of their virtualized environment through a unified and scalable platform for a more efficient and streamlined experience,” said Tom Georgens, president and chief operating officer for NetApp, as it was announced yesterday that NetApp and Cisco are teaming up to provide customers with unified, dynamic data center solutions that are based on Cisco’s Unified Computing System and NetApp Unified Storage Architecture.

Cisco and NetApp will also collaborate on joint marketing efforts, such as the multi-city “Virtualized Dynamic Data Center Roadshow” with VMware and other select solution integration partners. NetApp will also participate in Cisco’s Data Center of the Future program. Both of these programs will focus on educating customers about NetApp and Cisco data center offerings.

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“Customers, especially in today’s current economic environment, are always looking for ways to simplify, reduce costs, and increase efficiencies in their data centers. These attributes become increasingly important with the shift toward the virtualized data center,” said Mario Mazzola, senior vice president, Server Access and Virtualization business unit, Cisco. “We are committed to working with NetApp to deliver to customers the foundation for a truly virtualized and unified data center. With its Unified Storage Architecture, NetApp will complement the Cisco Unified Computing System, helping many of our customers realize all of the benefits of the dynamic data center.”

In March, Cisco announced that NetApp is a participant in Cisco’s open ecosystem of partners for the Unified Computing System, which is focused on stimulating innovation, enhancing service delivery, and accelerating the market adoption of Unified Computing. In addition, Cisco and NetApp have a long history of collaboration and many common customers that have deployed Cisco and NetApp technologies and solutions in their data centers. NetApp supports and resells the Cisco Nexus 5000 and MDS data center switching products, and in 2008, Cisco and NetApp announced support for the industry’s first native FCoE storage array.

The two companies have also worked together on an Ethernet Unification Center of Excellence, located at NetApp’s campus in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, which was announced in February. The center features Ethernet-based protocols running on a Cisco 10 Gigabit Ethernet backbone.