EMC outlines plans for a virtual IT company

The model will involve EMC supplying the scalable storage and information management disciplines for backup and archiving, and RSA's security expertise, while Cisco will provide the networking products, such as the Nexus 1000v virtual switch, and VMware the software on top, most importantly vSphere.

Cisco's recently launched Unified Computing System will also complement the model, providing an optimised hosting platform for virtual machines that unifies servers, storage, networking and virtualisation.

However, the key question put to the company representatives was where Microsoft's expertise fits in with their vision. Microsoft has been VMware's main competitor in the hypervisor market since launching Hyper-V last June.

Hollis implied that Microsoft was not ready to join the partnership. "We all have ecosystem partners, but the key to this is getting virtualisation technology that scales, and at the moment we can't get that from Microsoft," he said.

Such comments could come as a surprise to those who attended a New York chief information officer summit on 3 February when Tucci and Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer announced that their strategic alliance would become " broader" and "deeper" to address customer requirements around virtualisation.

The comments from VMware in response to the Microsoft question were less unexpected. "For Microsoft to be up here, they have to get out of their Windows base and two-dimensional paradigms," said Parag Patal, vice president of alliances at VMware.

Cisco's answer was more diplomatic. "We are a big partner with Microsoft, but we came up with a common vision because we have a common business model," said Bugnion, adding that Cisco's alliance with Microsoft is in service delivery.

Chuck concluded that, although many companies are hesitant to deploy a private cloud because the technology is so new and "architects are paid to be conservative by nature", he had noticed a mood change throughout the industry in recent weeks.
"What seems different is that there is an opportunistic mood to experiment with these things now," he said.