These past two weeks have been a time for celebrating the 5^th anniversary of UCS and an extraordinary achievement in terms of market penetration.

Click on the images for more data 

We made it thanks the strong and tireless support from our partners , but (make no mistakes here) primary  thanks to a breakthrough vision and solution. In his exciting blog "The Right Solution at the Right time ",  Todd Brannon is measuring this breakthrough solution by the unique features timely provided to the market by the UCS approach.

I want in this blog to appreciate this technology shift through the eyes of numerous customers and partners,  that I had the pleasure to interviews over the past years .Watch this little sample and listen to the enthusiastic voices and the warm comments of these early adopters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RUjpZYqvBs

This  mix of satisfaction, "wow"  and pride that I never experienced even at the flamboyant time of Sun Microsystems, where  I used to work (disclosure),  is for me the real  sign of a breakthrough  solution which ultimately changes the way  professional work, but also live their life . We illustrated this change is this little rosy commercial "For a better life"

What amazes me today is that this level of satisfaction , 5 years after UCS launch, is not going down. As an example, I invite you to watch Alessandro Perrino, who explained at Cisco Live Milan, how FASTWEB takes advantages of UCS.FASTWEB, fullly owned by Swisscom, a leading telecommunications provider in Italy,  offers advanced services to residential customers and business segments including public authorities, large companies, small and medium enterprises, professionals, sohos, universities and research institutions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jVtFlM5Eus

FASTWEB  realized that improved customer experience, end-to-end control, and good margins would be easier to achieve if it built its own cloud service delivery  solution. With Cisco Nexus? switching technologies already installed in its primary data center, the company decided to adopt Cisco Unified Computing System?  as its cloud offering foundation.

I can clearly see that the work of Cisco engineers who address new challenges , add new solutions ( ie UCS Manager, UCS Central , UCS Director) and new technologies  ( ie SingleConnect , Invicta) so that the UCS family keeps growing,  and delivers an impressive list of benchmark records, making it  the preferred platform for more and more applications ( ERP, web, communications,Cloud, Big data ..).

We at Cisco are also very grateful for the strong support we got from our partners, whether they are technology partners, independent software vendors, systems integrators, distributors or resellers ... They truly believed in the concept, saw the benefits for their customers, and have been working  diligently to implement and support . They  keep improving the platforms by bringing innovative ideas, providing integration with their own solutions, and best practices to make the UCS deployment easier, faster and even more reliable.  But let's be real here . What solution, if not a breakthrough solution, can be adopted so quickly and enthusiastically by partners , who are  constantly invited by our competition to support other solutions ?

 Today our customers and partners keep praising the UCS technology and platforms, using it a critical component to build  the next generation of data center -

In the following weeks , I will keep celebrating UCS anniversary with more testimonials of these customers and partners
Stay tuned and don't hesitate to follow  on Twitter @ciscocustomers  and @drombaut 

Resources
-Fastweb case study  and blog  "Fastweb delivers New value-Added Cloud Services"
-Consert 
-EMC Global IT 
-Hay Group Inc.  and IPR International 
-Pacific Coast Building Products 
-Maryland Peninsula Regional Medical Center 
-Pitt Ohio video
-Secure-24