Cisco and NetApp have an expanded partnership to deliver new converged infrastructure innovation to unify branch office, data centre and public cloud infrastructures under the FlexPod architecture. The partnership expansion includes efforts in technology integration, solution development, and continued go-to-market collaboration – all designed to make it easier for customers to deploy and access next-generation cloud infrastructure solutions.

Current IT architectures comprise a fragmented combination of infrastructure along with public, private and hybrid clouds offered by different organizations and addressing distinct customer needs. Through a shared vision of a unified data center, Cisco and NetApp offer the ability to simplify deployment, management and orchestration — connecting enterprise clouds to service providers, enterprises to branch offices, consumers to enterprises, and clouds to clouds.

Deeper integration across computing, networking, storage and orchestration components of FlexPod, combined with broader support for its open ecosystem of partners, will greatly simplify data centre deployment and management, deliver greater budget efficiency, reduce risk, and increase agile business responsiveness.