Recently Cisco Systems announced it would be making a $150 million investment in virtual IT.  Cisco will be putting money in server virtualization vendor VMWare, and solution providers expect this investment will increase the interest in virtual IT and virtualization.  

This investment makes Cisco the second largest strategic investor in VMWare this month next to Intel.  Intel invested $218.5 in the virtual IT world when it went with VMWare.  EMC also stated it was going to sell a ten-percent stake in VMWare to help VMWaer employees get more value out of the company.  EMC purchased VMWare in December 2003.  

Cisco’s latest purchase of VMWare’s virtual IT Class A shares means it will own 1.6 percent of VMWare’s total stock.  VMWare is in discussions to think about appointing a Cisco executive to VMWare’s board of directors at some point as well.  

The purchase of VMWare stock is consistent with Cisco’s announcement that it would be getting more involved in virtualization and virtual IT, an announcement made at the Cisco Live 2007 end-user conference earlier this week.  At the conference, Cisco stated it is building a data center strategy based on network infrastructure, storage networking and application networking.  These new specializations will not count towards certification for partners, but  will provide training and tech badges for those building practices based on data centers.

For more information on this burgeoning partnership and virtual IT story, visit the attached link.  

Submitted By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit