I was speaking with a customer today at VMworld and, unlike many discussions, which are focused on the infrastructure (servers, storage, networking), this one turned primarily on the application. This person was describing to me his need to match the server to a new set of applications he is being asked to support and then what to do with all the data being generated.   With much of the conversation at the show focusing on virtualization of resources, he made the point that consideration of the architecture itself -how servers, storage and networking is leveraged -was still critical to mapping the requirements of the application back to what that application lives on.

This is a trend we're seeing more and more.  A new breed of applications, and the increasing density of data, is driving a new way of thinking about the underlying infrastructure.  Often, these applications are developed internally, leveraging many of the toolkits available on the market today, and delivered through a private or public cloud.  These applications can be run fromremote facilities, which generate data that can be used immediately onsite (such as analyzing customer behavior in a store).  A separate application running in the data center may be analyzing that data for buying trends, which could impact forecasting and stocking of a given store.  And finally, a separate application may be pulling from a data warehouse to study data over the long term.

Each of these applications need scalability and performance but may have more specific demands of the platform itself.  If today these platforms are all managed separately (perhaps by different groups in various organizations), then the opportunity is to consolidate, optimize and simplify onto a common architecture.  Cisco UCS has grown to the number 1 one position in the blade server market in the Americas today by delivering this much-needed capability.   Check out The Next Wave of Innovation Cisco UCS Fall Launch Sept 4th Blog post to learn more.

On September 4, you'll hear about the next evolution of UCS to meet the demands of this next generation of applications and data analytics.  Tune into the broadcast by registering here.   Follow us at @CiscoDC and use#UCSGrandSlam to let us know what you think.