Cisco Calls Beating HP In The x86 Game A 'Validation Point'

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Cisco's Unified Computing System continues to be a source of growth for the networking giant; the company recently celebrated IDC numbers showing Cisco overtaking Hewlett-Packard in the North America x86 server space.

"In five years, we've gone from zero to over 33,000 customers," said Vice President of UCS Product Marketing Jim McHugh. McHugh called the surge ahead of HP a "major milestone" and "validation point" for customers and partners. McHugh said about 75 percent of Fortune 500 companies are also UCS customers.

Cisco has been able to retain about half of those customers for repeat business, according to McHugh. In an effort to continue to grow the UCS business, Cisco has developed application performance with the recent acquisition of Whiptail.

Cisco also recently announced a partnership with Microsoft in the data center space.

"In the data center business, it's a natural to partner with Microsoft," McHugh said. "If you really want to reach out and solve your customers' business problems, you have to partner with Microsoft."

The partnership will focus on growth in the Hyper-V space, and ensuring smooth deployments.

PUBLISHED AUG. 7, 2014