Cisco, on Tuesday introduced the UCS S-Series: a new storage-optimized server category in the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) portfolio, designed specifically to address the needs of data intensive workloads such as Big Data, and for deploying software-defined storage, object storage, and data protection solutions. The UCS S- Series can handle the rapid growth of unstructured data created by the Internet of Things, video, mobility, collaboration and analytics so that businesses can access and analyze data quickly to generate insights in real time.

Data has become the lifeblood of every organization, and the way it’s used is changing rapidly. Traditionally, data was warehoused and accessed intermittently. Industry analysts estimate that less than 40 percent of stored enterprise data is ever used to create insight. New applications such as video analytics, diagnostic imaging, streaming analytics, and machine learning demand and create data that is “un-stored” and actively processed in real time. Traditional static IT infrastructure no longer works in a world of continuous insight and innovation, while public cloud storage solutions can become expensive as data sets grow quickly and unpredictably. 

“IDC sees a dramatic shift in how new technologies are being applied to solve business problems and drive strategic growth in this, the 3rd platform era. Organizations are transforming themselves digitally and as they do so they are stressing the need to bring their compute and data resources closer together. Next gen applications including big data analytics remain top IT objectives and as data becomes increasingly strategic, core storage infrastructure is being redefined in software as a server workload,” said Matt Eastwood, SVP, Enterprise Infrastructure and Datacenter, IDC.

The UCS S3260 Storage Server, the first in the UCS S-series, delivers the versatility, rapid scalability and cloud connectivity customers need to transform their data into business intelligence and insights. With the first fully modular architecture in the industry and the automation of UCS Manager, the S3260 lowers total cost of ownership (TCO) by over 50 percent compared to public cloud, with the ability to right-size infrastructure to efficiently power every workload.

The UCS S3260 provides a wide range of capacity and performance options with up to 600 Terabytes of storage capacity per system, frictionless scaling up to Petabytes with UCS Manager, cache acceleration, and unified I/O connectivity for any type of data storage. With these capabilities, organizations can move from inactive data in warehouses and clouds to dynamic applications on a cloud-scale platform with high-speed processing to activate, analyze and act on data in real time.

Cisco also announced the next generation of its ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite, a hybrid cloud software solution that offers freedom of choice for application teams and delivers a self-service portal that can be tailored for end users, application developers and IT professionals. Cisco ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite now delivers hybrid cloud for automation across the entire IT organization and user base. With this solution teams can deploy to over 20 different data center, private and public cloud environments. In addition, new annual subscription licenses in one, three, and five-year options enable customers to choose the right automation plan at the most cost-effective price point.

The ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite has four offers, which can be used singly or in any combination.

• Infrastructure Automation: Speeds time to market through consistent and faster delivery of error-free infrastructure environments to business and application teams.  Service Management: Empowers customers with self-service order and service management through a simple, intuitive user interface
• Cloud Management: Enables faster time to market while reducing development costs by modeling application profiles once and deploying to multiple hybrid environments
• Big Data Automation: Drives consistency with one-click installation, provisioning and deployment of Hadoop and Splunk clusters.  Reduces risk with near real-time diagnostics and historical analysis.

These additions are part of Cisco’s evolving next generation data center architecture which enables enterprise organizations to incorporate the best aspects of cloud and on-premise data centers. The result is a complete, secure, and agile hybrid cloud platform. Organizations are increasingly under pressure to rapidly deliver new services and applications, and many are transitioning to a Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CICD) model. At the same time, digital transformation is resulting in the creation of thousands of new enterprise applications that are becoming the primary interface between the customer and the enterprise, especially for digital transactions. To meet these challenges, Cisco’s strategy is to provide a data center architecture that enables customers to Analyze, Simplify, Automate, and Protect their data and applications: the ASAP data center. Cisco’s architecture provides unique advantages through the integration of analytics, networking, compute, and security with consistent policies within the data center and across data centers and clouds.

To support Cisco customers and partners in their automation journey with UCS Director, Cisco DevNet has revamped the UCS Developer Center to make it easier for developers to leverage the UCS Manager and UCS Director APIs for DevOps automation. Enhancements include new self-paced learning labs with personalized learning tracks for Infrastructure and Application Developers.