Roundup: VCE, SAP, Cisco, Juniper, Alcatel-Lucent update from November 2011

Here’s our review of some of this week’s news in the data center industry:

VCE Teams with SAP.  VCE announced Monday that it has become a SAP global technology partner, through which it will cooperate with SAP AG to help customers deploy the latest virtualization and cloud technologies to simplify and automate their mission-critical applications. Running on VCE Vblock Infrastructure Platforms VCE will work closely with SAP to provide services and support for customer SAP applications. "SAP and VCE are working together to help our mutual customers optimize their SAP solutions on the VCE Vblock Infrastructure Platform to transform business processes," said Kevin Ichhpurani, senior vice president, Business Development and Strategic Alliances at SAP.  "This global technology partnership provides a framework for a variety of collaborative efforts designed to bring together the cloud and virtualization technologies enabled by VCE converged infrastructure with SAP software and applications to help customers be more efficient and lower costs."

Mexico's Alestra uses VCE Foundation.  At Cisco Live! Mexico IT and telecom company Alestra announced it will offer cloud services to Mexican customers based on VBlock Infrastructure Platforms, which integrate best-of-breed technology from Cisco, EMC and VMware into a highly automated and standardized IT infrastructure. The cloud computing capabilities will allow Alestra to expand its value-added services portfolio, to include an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) solution for virtual computing, storage  and disaster recovery capabilities through its Enterprise C-Computing service. "Cisco has been providing technology for Alestra since its first MPLS and IP network  deployment, and now Cisco is able to support it to enhance its  portfolio with a new line of business at the same time we still supporting its network to ensure reliability, capacity, flexibility and resilience to Alestra end customers," said Alejandro Ceballos, from Cisco Mexico. "The  VBlock platform will help Alestra accelerate its ability to realize the benefits of pervasive virtualization and private cloud infrastructure." Alestra's infrastructure includes two VBlock interconnected platforms, one  to be deployed in  Monterrey and one  in Guadalajara.

Juniper selected by WI-Manx.  Juniper Networks (JNPR) announced that Wi-Manx, an Isle of Man communications and IT solution provider, has selected Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches and MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers as the backbone for its new state-of-the-art data center and IPv6 Network. "This data center is critical to our strategy of building on international success and becoming a truly global player in the data center market, enabling us to offer the very latest technology at a competitive rate," said Joe Hughes, chief technical officer, Wi-Manx. From the new data center, Wi-Manx will launch a comprehensive range of hosting services including dedicated servers, co-location solutions, virtual servers, cloud hosting, complex hosting, domain-name and e-mail services.

Alcatel-Lucent and China Unicom partner.  Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) and China Unicom, one of the country’s major communications service providers, have announced plans to launch one of the largest fiber broadband access networks to date in China. The Alcatel-Lucent Gigabit Passive Optical Networking (GPON) platform will be used to ensure future capacity and speed demands are met. With this deployment, China Unicom will be able to offer subscribers speeds of up to 100 Megabits-per-second, all with guaranteed quality of service levels providing great flexibility to a wide range of consumer and business services including IPTV, video on demand, and voice over IP (VoIP). “This project represents another major milestone in the rapid expansion of broadband in China. It also demonstrates our strong and growing leadership position in the FTTx market as we help accelerate availability of superfast broadband throughout China," said Rajeev Singh-Molares, President, Asia-Pacific at Alcatel-Lucent.