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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteOn November 3, 2009, Cisco, EMC and VMware announced the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition to speed adoption of virtualization and private-cloud infrastructure. Its central offering was Vblock, a pre-integrated system combining components from the three companies and EMC-owned RSA. A related Cisco–EMC joint venture, Acadia, was intended to help customers build and initially operate those systems before handing them over—not to become a long-term hosting provider.
What the companies announced in 2009
The coalition joined Cisco’s compute and networking products, EMC storage, VMware’s vSphere virtualization platform and an RSA security framework. The goal was to package these technologies as an integrated, repeatable foundation for private clouds and virtualization deployments, with coordinated vendor accountability. It was enterprise infrastructure, not a consumer cloud service or a single software license.
The announcement described the packages as integrated, tested, validated and ready to deploy; those were vendor claims, not independent test findings. Contemporaneous reporting described three Vblock configurations for deployments ranging from 300 to 6,000 virtual servers. That range refers to configurations announced in 2009, not a current capacity specification. The announcement republished by Dell and Data Center Knowledge’s November 2009 report provide the contemporaneous descriptions.
What Vblock was—and how its configurations differed
Vblock was a pre-integrated infrastructure package: Cisco supplied Unified Computing System (UCS) compute and networking, EMC supplied storage, VMware supplied vSphere, and RSA supplied the security framework. The three configurations were aimed at different deployment scales, rather than representing separate consumer products.
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| Configuration | Announced role or scale | What the available 2009 reporting establishes |
|---|---|---|
| Vblock 0 | Entry-level deployments, including test and development | Named as one of three configurations; the cited reporting describes the overall announced range as 300 to 6,000 virtual servers, but does not assign a specific server count to this model. |
| Vblock 1 | Mid-sized consolidation | Named as one of three configurations; a model-specific server count is not stated in the cited reporting. |
| Vblock 2 | Large-scale, greenfield virtualization | Named as one of three configurations; a model-specific server count is not stated in the cited reporting. |
These labels describe the 2009 announcement, not current purchasing options. The supplied contemporaneous descriptions do not provide enough model-by-model capacity detail to map the reported 300-to-6,000 range to individual Vblocks.
Acadia’s role: build, operate, then transfer
Acadia was a Cisco–EMC joint venture, with investment from Intel and VMware. Its proposed service model was to help large enterprises and service providers construct private-cloud infrastructure, run it during an initial transition period, and then transfer operations to the customer, a system integrator or a hosting partner. Cisco was quoted at the time as saying Acadia did not intend to be in the hosting business. In other words, Acadia was positioned as an implementation and transition venture, not a permanent hosted-cloud provider. Contemporaneous coverage describes the model.
In May 2010, Cisco said Michael D. Capellas would lead the VCE coalition and become Acadia’s CEO. Cisco framed the appointment as supporting customer and partner adoption and described Acadia as a way for partners to accelerate customer build-outs. The company also reported that 45 partners and six system integrators were selling Vblocks, with about 200 more partners in certification. Those are Cisco’s figures from 2010, not a present-day partner count. Cisco’s May 6, 2010 announcement gives its account of the appointment and partner program.
What happened to VCE later
On October 22, 2014, VCE announced that it would become an EMC business, while Cisco and VMware would continue as strategic partners and investors. VCE said its charter was broadening toward hybrid-cloud and converged-infrastructure offerings. This was a change from the original coalition and joint-venture structure; it does not establish whether Acadia or the original Vblock products are available today. VCE’s 2014 announcement filed with the SEC records the transition.
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The same release reported that, exiting the third quarter of 2014, VCE had surpassed a $2 billion annualized demand run-rate for Vblock and related products and services. It also said more than 1,000 enterprises and service providers worldwide had deployed over 2,000 Vblock systems. These are company-reported figures, not independent confirmation of current deployments.
VCE’s release also summarized a VCE-commissioned IDC study as finding that customers, on average, deployed new services five times faster, reduced downtime by 96%, and lowered annual data-center costs by 50%. These are results attributed to that study and its surveyed customer sample; they should not be read as guaranteed outcomes for every deployment.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to interpret the private-cloud market claims
In 2010, Cisco forecast that the private-cloud infrastructure market would reach $85 billion by 2015. That was a forecast made at the time, not a current market-size estimate. Likewise, the scale figures and performance claims above describe historical announcements or company-reported results; they do not establish present-day product availability or typical customer outcomes.
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