DOW JONES NEWSWIRES Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), EMC Corp. (EMC) and VMware Inc. (VMW) unveiled a joint venture to sell a new integrated data center product, part of a broader trend by technology companies to provide a broad range of products. The joint venture will sell and provide maintenance and service support for the product, named "V-Block," combining EMC's storage equipment, Cisco's virtualized servers and networking gear and VMWare's virtualization technology. There are two components to the alliance. The joint venture will be responsible for marketing and providing maintenance and support for V-Block. But the actual cloud infrastructure will be constructed by a coalition of the three companies. Seeking growth in a stagnating IT spending environment, technology giants have breached new markets, turning once stalwart allies into competitors. The move by Cisco, EMC and VMWare comes amid a wave of consolidation among companies that provide hardware, software and services to corporate data centers. Following the actions of International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) to create one-stop IT shops, Dell Inc. (DELL) announced in September it will purchase IT services firm Perot Systems Corp. (PER). Software giant Oracle Corp. (ORCL), meanwhile, is awaiting European antitrust approval for its acquisition of Sun Microsystems Inc. (JAVA). Cisco and EMC currently have an alliance to collaborate around Cisco's next-generation data center platform, the Cisco Unified Computing System, which will be a component of V-Block. EMC owns nearly 85% of VMware. In September, The Wall Street Journal reported that the two companies were in talks to form a new technology services venture, code-named Alpine. -By Jerry A. DiColo and Roger Cheng; Dow Jones Newswires
