This month the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), a Boston area based analyst firm, published a white paper commissioned by Cisco and Microsoft on the topic of the private cloud. In it ESG covers the best-of-breed technologies and solutions that Cisco and Microsoft bring to market together for Windows Server 2012 R2 / Hyper-V based private cloud configurations.

Below are "The Bigger Truths", as ESG phrased their summary of findings on the Cisco / Microsoft better together story -please feel free to take a look, it's a good read!...  :

Accelerated time to market: Enter markets quickly with easy access across multiple consumption models driven by Cisco infrastructure and Microsoft software.

CapEx and OpEx savings: Savings on CapEx and OpEx costs can be achieved by virtualizing the server environment with no additional CapEx when moving to the cloud, minimizing implementation complexity, enabling virtual management with increased control, and gaining the ability to scale as required.

Rapid ROI:Because this environment is software-defined, and its infrastructure is efficient, it can quickly pay for itself by simplifying provisioning, efficient time to value, and operational efficiencies.

High availability:Because the Cisco Unified Data Center fabric has no single point of failure, it unifies compute, storage, networking, and management resources into a single, fabric-based platform that can increase operating efficiency and availability, simplify the data center, and provide business agility. Microsoft solutions compound this value with data protection solutions for on- and off-premises protection.

Increased IT organizational efficiencies: Due to the ease of implementation and management, IT pros can be shifted to positions where they are most productive and leverage their current Microsoft and Cisco certifications.

Accelerated business agility:Turnkey platforms such as FlexPod and VSPEX offer simple and secure private cloud solutions that can speed companies' deployment, can be scaled up or down in response to changing workloads, and can allow companies to drive revenue opportunities more quickly.

Flexibility to use alternative cloud consumption models:Because Windows Server 2012 R2 enables companies to work in three different cloud environments, they can readily change their consumption models without additional OpEx costs and take advantage of multiple consumption models.

Ease of management with System Center, UCS Manager, PowerTool and Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI):Cisco, through UCS Manager, PowerTool ACI, and Microsoft, through System Center 2012 R2 enable companies to have unified management across all their cloud components-managing, monitoring, measuring, and automating every layer in the stack.

A new competitive advantage:The combination of close coordination and product integration that Cisco and Microsoft have put into this joint private cloud project is both innovative and forward-thinking. "Better together" is an apt description of the positive effect on customer value when these two business partners optimize the private cloud infrastructure.

To learn more about this ESG whitepaper and our Microsoft Private Cloud solutions, please click the documents below to download.