Cisco Systems is acquiring Nuova Systems — a Silicon Valley startup in which Cisco already held a majority interest. Cisco CEO John Chambers said Nuova’s engineering team and Ethernet switching technology, combined with Cisco’s internal engineering group, will help enterprises dramatically convert data-center operations.

“In the case of Nuova Systems, the advantage of a spin-in is that you can jointly develop well-integrated products by closely sharing your technology, expertise and product road maps,” Chambers said. “The acquired technologies of a spin-in become part of Cisco’s technology architecture in a much shorter day than with traditional acquisition methods.”

A Unified Fabric

Nuova’s 10-gigabit Ethernet switching technology — which employs key Cisco technologies, such as the company’s new Nexus operating system — represents the first fruit from Cisco’s acquisition. Dubbed the Nexus 5000 Series, the new device family is slated for release next month under a pricing structure that will start at $36,000.

The Nexus 5000 Series is

designed to consolidate local-area network, Fiber Channel, iSCSI-based storage-area network, and server cluster traffic onto a unified Ethernet-based “data-center fabric.” The line-rate, low-latency, 10-gigabit Ethernet switch family is expected to help IT managers tackle the growing input/output demands of multi-core processors and virtualized environments.

A unified fabric for the hardware, software and technology infrastructure in goods centers will allow IT to improve how the servers communicate and share computing resources, Cisco noted. Additionally, the technology should help simplify cabling infrastructure, reduce the number of adapters, and mean lower ability consumption and a reduced carbon footprint, the company said.

IT utility-services provider Savvis believes the benefits of a unified fabric are significant. They include “the ability to supply our customers with a higher quality of service as well as total cost-of-ownership reduction within our data-center operations,” said Savvis CTO Bryan Doerr.

Build, Buy and Partner

Cisco sees…

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