NEW YORK, NY and SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwire - March 16, 2009) - Accenture (
NYSE:
ACN) and
Cisco (
NASDAQ:
CSCO) today introduced four new solutions based on Cisco's
next-generation data center platform, the
Unified Computing
System, that are designed to help large enterprises improve the
scalability and reduce the total cost of their information technology
architectures.
The Cisco Unified Computing System is an evolutionary data center
architecture that unites computing, network, storage access and
virtualization resources in a single energy-efficient system. It
allows large organizations to migrate their enterprise applications -- such
as mission-critical ERP applications -- from expensive big computers
to smaller, simpler, more efficient and cost-effective systems powered by
low-cost microprocessors.
The four Accenture and Cisco Unified Computing Solutions cover four main
areas: core enterprise applications; data center consolidation; advanced,
memory-intensive computing; and infrastructure services. The solutions
will be delivered through the
Accenture &
Cisco Business Group, a cross-company dedicated team focused on helping
large enterprises increase business agility by embedding unified computing
capabilities into their key business processes.
"The Accenture & Cisco Business Group is uniquely equipped to help clients
quickly realize the multiple benefits offered by the Cisco Unified
Computing System," said Don Rippert, Accenture's chief technology officer.
"Our one-team approach helps ensure that our Unified Computing Solutions
are effectively integrated into key business processes and existing
operations architectures to make clients more agile, more quickly."
Steve Steinhilber, vice president of Strategic Alliances for Cisco, said,
"Accenture understands the importance of an open, innovative, virtualized
platform for managing applications across the enterprise. We have worked
together to build and deliver new collaborative service offerings that help
enterprises enhance application performance and reduce costs."
The solutions announced today focus on four areas:
- Enterprise applications. Unified Computing Solution for ERP
addresses the needs of clients who are running core enterprise
applications, especially ERP applications like SAP and Oracle. The
solution is based on a lower-cost infrastructure with the
virtualization capabilities that help enable organizations to easily
transition their ERP and other enterprise applications to the new Cisco
Unified Computing System. This simple and inexpensive migration helps
improve enhanced application performance and easier application
management.
- Data center consolidation. The Unified Computing Solution
for Data Center Consolidation addresses the needs of companies seeking
to virtualize and consolidate their data center operations by providing
an IT infrastructure based on a simpler data-center configuration,
which helps reduce capital and operational costs.
- Advanced, memory-intensive computing. The Unified Computing
Solution for High-Performance Computing addresses the
computing-intensive needs of scientific, financial, retail,
public-service and industrial organizations running custom,
industry-specific, transactional intensive applications. The Cisco
Unified Computing System offers extended memory technology and
processing power to help clients migrate and run these applications on
the new platform at a fraction of the cost.
- Infrastructure-as-a-Service. The Unified Computing Solution
for Infrastructure-as-a-Service helps enable organizations to purchase,
on an as-needed basis (i.e., during times of peak load), a highly
secure, scalable and regulatory-compliant technology infrastructure
based on an industry-standard platform. Now service providers can
offer highly scalable, enterprise-quality cloud computing -- i.e., IT
resources provided as a service via the Internet -- to customers who
want to outsource part of all or their data center operations.
"Accenture has worked intensively with Cisco's Unified Computing System
developers over the past year to build a suite of solutions that combine
the new technology with our industrialized data center and application
migration capabilities," said Accenture's Andre Hughes, who heads up the
Accenture & Cisco Business Group. "The Accenture Cisco Unified Computing
Solution will help companies migrate their ERP and industry-specific
computing applications to the more cost-effective virtualized platform
while offering service providers a cost-efficient platform for delivering
flexible 'infrastructure-as-a-service' solutions."
Additional Resources:
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and
outsourcing company. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive
capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive
research on the world's most successful companies, Accenture collaborates
with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and
governments. With more than 186,000 people serving clients in over 120
countries, the company generated net revenues of US$23.39 billion for the
fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2008. Its home page is
www.accenture.com.
About Cisco
Cisco (
NASDAQ:
CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms
how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco
can be found at
http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to
http://newsroom.cisco.com.
Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of
Accenture. Cisco, the Cisco logo and Cisco Systems are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc.
For direct RSS Feeds of all Cisco news, please visit "News@Cisco" at the
following link:
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/rss.html
Contact Information: Media Contacts:
Ed Trapasso
Accenture
email: ed.trapasso@accenture.com
phone: +1-917-452-3555
Pamela Ferrill
Cisco
email: parupert@cisco.com
phone: +1-408-527-9076
Analyst Contacts:
Rob Petrucelli
Accenture
email: robert.d.petrucelli@accenture.com
phone: +1-917-452-4810
Laura Irwin
Cisco
email: lirwin@cisco.com
phone: +1-408-853-8876