Microsoft Signs Up NetApp, Cisco to Private Cloud Dev Program

I’ll say this for Microsoft: when it comes to the cloud, the company stays on-message. At this week’s Microsoft TechEd 2011 conference in Atlanta, Microsoft announced further momentum to its Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track private cloud delivery partner program. This time around, Cisco Systems and NetApp have jointly developed a data center architecture designed to speed up private cloud deployments using Microsoft technology.

The benefits of using the NetApp Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track with Cisco architecture is simple, according to NetApp’s press release: Private cloud infrastructure and application deployment time goes from days to hours, and it uses IT resources more efficiently, to boot. Thanks to that Microsoft partnership, they’ve built their architecture on the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 and Microsoft System Center management platforms.

For those who are a little more jargon-minded, here’s the laundry list of tech specs for the NetApp/Cisco offering, taken directly from that press release:

The architecture design is comprised of Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) servers and Cisco Nexus switches; Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 and Microsoft System Center components, including Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, Microsoft System Center Service Manager, and Opalis Integration Server; and NetApp unified storage systems running Data ONTAP, with a software bundle that includes the NetApp OnCommand 3.0 plug-in for Microsoft.

For NetApp’s part, the cloud service provider has spent some time in 2011 making moves toward expanding its footprint in the managed services world. But is hinging a major private cloud offering on Cisco technology akin to taking a rowboat out to the Titanic?

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