Acadia, Cisco, EMC, VMware data center cloud unveiled

Cisco, EMC and VMware last week unveiled the much rumored joint venture to sell their products to companies wanting to build internal clouds. Vblocks will be sold by Cisco, EMC and VMware to their largest enterprise customers and through the channel by systems integrators, service providers and solution providers. Called Acadia (for who knows what reason), the joint venture is a collaboration between the three companies that will launch in 2010 and sell what they call Vblocks, preconfigured packages of Cisco UCS blade servers, EMC storage gear, VMware virtualization software and EMC Ionix management software.

Already the coalition of Cisco, EMC and VMware has inked deals with six integrators, six service providers and nine solution providers. The company Acadia, which is being formed as we speak, will hire its own CEO and is hiring sales representatives. At the moment, Vblocks are pr-built, pretested and preconfigured packages that include Cisco's recently announced UCS blade servers, the company's networking switches, EMC Symmetrix V-Max or Clariion arrays and VMware's vSphere virtualization software. No one yet knows (or they aren't talking about it) where the company will be based. Vblock's consists of three configurations: * Vblock 2 is a high-end configuration supporting up to 3,000-6,000 virtual machines that is targeted at large enterprises and service providers. Acadia has investments from Cisco, VMware and EMC and minority investments from Intel.

It uses Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS), Nexus 1000v and Multilayer Directional Switches (MDS), EMC's Symmetrix V-Max storage and the VMware vSphere platform.* Vblock 1 is a midsized configuration supporting 800 up to 3,000 virtual machines that uses Cisco's UCS, Nexus 1000v and MDS, EMC's CLARiiON storage and the VMware vSphere platform.* Vblock 0 will be an entry-level configuration available in 2010, supporting 300 up to 800 virtual machines that uses Cisco's UCS and Nexus 1000v, EMC's Unified Storage and the VMware vSphere platform.