Unification is a big deal for Adena Health Systems, a medical center with multiple Ohio locations. The company’s data center was running on disparate technology that was causing outages, neglecting incoming calls, and slowing business. With some tough competition nearby, Adena’s aging infrastructure was becoming a burden; not to mention the struggle with supporting important medical applications.

Adena took action and updated its network with Cisco technology, implementing the cohesive infrastructure of the Cisco® Unified Computing System™ (UCS), based on Intel® Xeon® processors, to run their data center. In doing so, not only was the IT infrastructure unified, but the IT team and the business were also brought together to provide top-of-the-line functionality.

Alignment between the IT staff, the business, and the technology is proving successful for the company. Additionally, virtualization has decreased the physical IT footprint and is more cost effective, while enhanced communication is achieved with videoconferencing and VoIP capabilities. IT is now at the center of Adena’s business vision, allowing for the support of applications and functionality to ensure world-class patient care.

Read more about the benefits of Adena’s IT transformation here.

Tags: UCS, unified computing, voip

The saying “you’ve gotta give credit where credit is due” is exceptionally literal for Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Recently becoming recognized as one of the most successful academic institutions in the country, Liberty University can thank its ability to support the huge influx of students, faculty, and staff to the updated technology infrastructure of their data center.

With growth comes the need to accommodate the large numbers of people and resources – including IT support. The current IT systems were outdated and obstructing the potential for online expansion at the university. By implementing the Cisco® Unified Computing System™ (UCS), based on Intel® Xeon® Processors, Liberty’s network became more flexible, scalable, and reliable. The virtualized and consolidated infrastructure is able to support the multitude of users, which is ideal due to the 85,000 students accessing the network from 95 countries around the world.

Cisco UCS has significantly decreased downtime for both students and staff, resulting in the ability to focus on education, not IT issues. Higher satisfaction, growing enrollment rates, and a unified network make for a promising future for Liberty University and its students.

Read the full article here.

Tags: higher education, unified computing, virtualization

Cisco Unified Computing System Service Profiles and Templates contain over 127 different server identification and configuration settings.  These identity settings are abstracted from the physical server and stored in the UCS Domain where they can be leveraged automating and speeding deployment while reducing errors. Today, this Cisco innovation is still unique in the industry. The reality is that no other server vendor can offer the level of hardware abstraction that Cisco provides with UCS Manager using Service Profiles and Templates.

Unlike Cisco, other vendors must rely on many different tools and methods that are cobbled together to manage their servers.  For some, it can take up to six different tools to configure a subset of what Cisco can do with one and most of these tools are at an additional cost.

Are you concerned about systems management and how it impacts your total cost of ownership (TCO)? Here are some fair questions to ask your current vendor:

If you have more than one domain, UCS Central will manage them extending all the benefits of UCS Manger globally. You can leverage your templates and profiles across all servers regardless of location.

If you’d like to have a more in-depth discussion on this topic, contact your Cisco account team or Partner.

Want to learn more? Take Cisco UCS Manager for a test drive.

Convinced? Buy now and save with Cisco UCS SmartPlays.

Tags: blades, data center, Servers, UCS, unified computing, unified computing system

Last week I introduced our new Cisco Services framework to help guide your data center and cloud transformation -- Cisco Domain Ten ^(SM). I also described the types of challenges you should be thinking about in the Facilities and Infrastructure layer, Domain 1.  Now let’s discuss the type of challenges that Domain 2, Virtualization and Abstraction, could present to you.  While Cisco Domain Ten can be applied to help you in any data center transformation, I’ll keep focused on showing you how Cisco Domain Ten helps illuminate your path to cloud transformation.

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Tags: architecture, Cisco Domain Ten, Cisco Services, cloud_computing, data center, unified computing, virtualization

Yesterday I introduced you to the Cisco Domain Ten^SM, Cisco Services’ framework for simplifying data center transformation.  This model is applicable to both business  (enterprise), public sector (e.g. government, federal) and service provider (incl telco) organizations.

Today I will summarize some key challenges that you should consider when planning a transition to cloud (as one example of data center transformation), for Domain #1 -- Facilities and Infrastructure.

Cisco Domain Ten -- Simplifying Data Center Transformation

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Tags: architecture, Cisco Domain Ten, Cisco Services, Cisco UCS, cloud_computing, data center, data center security, storage networks, unified computing, Unified Data Center, Unified Fabric