San Jose (ip-192.com): Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), EMC Corp. (EMC) and VMware Inc. (VMW) unveiled a joint venture to sell a new integrated data center product named "V-Block," combining EMC's storage equipment, Cisco's virtualized servers and networking gear and VMware’s virtualization technology.

Basically, an A V-Block is a virtual block of IT gear, a set of server, storage and switch resources described as a metadata set and capable of being provisioned, operated, managed and de-provisioned by a data center operating system. Cisco and EMC bring the server, storage and network building blocks, and VMware brings the virtual glue to bind them together into a usable virtual machine inside a virtualized data center.

Seeking growth in a stagnant IT spending environment, the technology giants have breached new markets. The move by Cisco, EMC and VMware comes amid a wave of consolidation among companies that provide hardware, software and services to corporate data centers. Cisco and EMC currently have an alliance to collaborate around Cisco's next-generation data center platform, the Cisco Unified Computing System, which will be a component of V-Block. Furthermore, EMC holds a stake of nearly 85 percent in VMware.

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