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International Computerware, a datacenter consulting firm, on Wednesday announced the introduction of the vCube, the first partner driven datacenter solutions platform. The vCube design was developed around ICI's intellectual property and vast experience in datacenter architecture and integration utilizing their proven consulting methodology nCubed: Now, Next, Nirvana. The vCube is a "process driven" modular architecture built upon "proven technologies" making it the complete datacenter solutions platform. It is comprised of servers, switches, unified storage, virtualization, monitoring, information protection, and other modular components creating a simplified, flexible, and customer configurable solution.

"As we enter into a new era of IT, technology is changing at an even faster rate and Cloud Computing has become a viable solution to contain costs and share compute resources and applications. Organizations must now be able to understand the concepts of the Private Cloud, Public Cloud, and Hosted Clouds and understand how they can take advantage of this paradigm shift in computing," said Brad Maltz, CTO of ICI. "This is where ICI's vCube becomes a solution accelerator and technology enabler. The concept of the Private Cloud is to create a service offering from the internal IT department where a standardized, manageable, and simplified integration of technologies is needed to power the Private Cloud. The vCube was developed to enable customers to take their first steps towards a federated and cloud computing model."

Through ICI's extensive partnerships, the vCube's design provides a tailor-made compute platform that can leverage clients' technology preferences, skills, and relationships. Jamie Shepard, EVP of ICI, said, "During ICI's collaboration with customers on design it's not our intent to compromise a client's existing datacenter partnerships; rather, our aim is to integrate their server and switch layers into our vCube design." From the results of an nCubed assessment, existing HP, Dell, or Cisco servers and Brocade or Cisco switches can be incorporated. The foundation of the initial vCube offerings consists of VMware's vSphere Virtualization Platform, Apparent Networks PathView Network Monitoring Solution, EMC Unified Storage, EMC Information Protection Modules (Avamar or Data Domain), and APC rack and power equipment. All vCubes are racked, configured, and tested at ICI's Innovation Facility in Marlborough, MA.

"We're very pleased that ICI selected our PathView products as the basis for the integrated network management capabilities in both of their new vCube offerings," said Keith Bartlett, vice president of business development for Apparent Networks. "It demonstrates ICI's commitment to bringing the best array of technologies to bear on customers' IT challenges. With PathView functionality, ICI customers get an entirely new dimension of network visibility and problem solving capabilities. They get clear sight lines from the desktop to the datacenter across virtual and physical resources. These new capabilities provide an added level of operational surety that is increasingly important to customers transitioning to cloud-based services."

As of this announcement, there are two vCube offerings immediately available for datacenter deployments. The Infrastructure as a Service (I.a.a.S.) vCube and the Desktop as a Service (D.a.a.S.) vCube. Both vCube offerings allow organizations to easily and cost effectively manage their own internal private clouds; Furthermore, ICI has included two "Best-of-Breed" technologies such as Akorri's BalancePoint for the Infrastructure as a Service (I.a.a.S.) vCube and Liquidware Labs' Stratusphere and ProfileUnity for the Desktop as a Service (D.a.a.S.) vCube.