Reflections on the evolution of Unified Computing. Part II
From strength to strength
As I continue to look back on 10 years of the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS), I remain impressed by the unprecedented growth it has seen since its first shipment in July of 2009.
By September of 2012, we had 15,800 UCS customers worldwide, and were ranked #3 in the x86 blade market – with 15% market share worldwide and 11% share in Europe, Middle-East and Africa.
We also had a large and growing partner community, not to mention 64 world records when it came to performance benchmarks.
10 years on and we currently have more than 55,000 customers, an ever-increasing ecosystem of partners and we continue to demonstrate excellence through performance benchmarks. It has truly been an amazing and rewarding journey.
There have been so many highlights over the years. Here are some of my favourites:
- As early as September 2009 Cisco UCS was already making headlines. Chosen by VMware as the infrastructure for the VMWorld Data centre, which supported the instructor-led labs during the week-long conference.
The VMworld 2009 Data centre was built on Cisco UCS. Video source VMworld
- In November that same year, we announced the first ever converged infrastructure; integrating compute, network and storage data centre building blocks for ease of deployment, while also adding our C-series rack servers to the UCS family.
- By 2012 Cisco had emerged from ‘Other’ and had 11% of the x86 Blade market share and ranked #3 in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
- By 2013 Cisco had introduced a lower entry price point for UCS with the launch of UCS Mini, which is unique in that it uses the same blades as UCS.
- In 2016 Cisco announced its hyperconverged infrastructure platform, HyperFlex, which is also based on UCS and delivers a software defined infrastructure that protects customers’ existing UCS investments.
Over the past decade, Cisco UCS has supported any workload and any application meeting the needs of organisations within the data centre, at the edge, in the cloud and anywhere their data is.
As the data centre continues to transform, and data boundaries extend, we’re poised for a new wave of innovation and investment protections with UCS. The most recent example is the evolution in systems management Cisco is pioneering with Intersight.
This software as a service platform allows organisations to operate and manage the entire lifecycle of their IT infrastructure from that cloud. It employs artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to radically improve IT operations.
Next generation systems management
It has been an amazing journey for both Cisco UCS and I, first as a data centre consulting systems engineer and now business development manager driving the adoption of our data centre technologies across Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Stay tuned for my next update…
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