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Partnership of the strong: S&T and Cisco start new chapter in field of data centers

IDC: virtualization is the next phase in IT development

"Virtualization is the basic technological element in the transformation of the actual IT infrastructure into Cloud", said Jiří Helebrand, senior research analyst at IDC CEMA. He added that technology will play a key role in future business development and that virtualization will lead to decreased IT costs.

Despite the fact that traditional means of physical server implementation is very costly and requires a comprehensive approach from both the investment and human resource perspective, many IT companies still maintain this course and thereby lose numerous competitive advantages. According to IDC, in the traditional model, costs for infrastructure maintenance are eight times higher than investment costs, and additionally 50 per cent of the original hardware costs need to be taken into consideration for power supply and cooling. In contrast, IT virtualization and the sharing of hardware and software resources via a network bring many benefits. Better efficiency, easier migration of data, managing overload, saving costs for hardware, administration, and power - these are all reasons why the popularity of virtual servers is growing.

Source: IDC CEMA presentation
Even though company expenses for new server hardware equipment are only marginally growing, increased performance demand causes increased energy consumption, power supply and cooling. In addition to that comes an increasing demand on applications, all of which cause a significant increase in management and administration costs.

Source: IDC CEE Server Virtualization Study, 2009
IDC data also show that virtualization brings companies not only savings in investment and operational costs. but also many other benefits. Decentralisation of data centers promotes security and simultaneously increases the flexibility of the entire IT infrastructure, optimises IT employees, and eliminates server shut-downs. Thanks to the indisputable advantages, the popularity of virtualization grows from day to day, advancing from large to medium-sized companies, from less important to "crucial" applications.

S&T and Cisco open new virtualization opportunities

S&T has a long-term stable position on the data center market, which is why strengthening the collaboration with Cisco will be an asset to the development of this market segment The new specialization achieved by S&T also opens new possibilities in the field of virtualization and cloud computing for Slovak customers.

"We consider data center consolidation using virtualization of infrastructure as the top issue for our customers", says Peter Kucer, Country Manager, S&T Slovakia s.r.o. "The main objectives are clearly defined: optimisation of resources and decrease of operational costs in data centers. Our partnership also serves to further promote the collaboration of S&T and Cisco in Slovakia. Our customers can now profit from our combined expertise and higher level of service provision in the field of technology and data center solutions."

"A sophisticated virtual environment, mobile technologies, and the complexity of business applications call for highly flexible and high-performance data centers. Cisco solutions for new generation data centers are the basis of virtual business environments and can meet the requirements of almost any customer", says Marcel Rebroš, general manager of Cisco Slovakia, "I see the partnership with S&T as very important, because only strong partners allow us to not only offer comprehensive integrated solutions, but also services essential for transformation into the virtualized environment."

S&T is also regional partner of the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition – formed by VMware, Cisco and EMC - in Central and Eastern Europe. VCE focuses on the promotion of services for providing Datacenter in a rack. This solution meets all computing, storage, and network requirements for customers using the Vblock integrated module, which on one rack can manage scalable services for thousands of users. Furthermore, Vblock solutions open a new dimension in the operation of computer applications. Crucial business applications such as SAP, Oracle and Business Intelligence solutions can now be provided as SaaS (Software as a Service). To improve performance, Vblock offers the option of dynamic network adjustment to meet application requirements, allowing companies to simply handle a sudden increase in network operation at peak times without any manual manipulation.