Cisco and EMC join hands to lead cloud computing market

The cloud computing market is quickly becoming a high priority area of computing giants, Cisco Systems and EMC Corp. According to Reuters, the two firms are joining hands in order to enter the market of cloud computing hardware and software, competing directly against IBM and HP.

Cisco and EMC are to release a series of cloud-computing equipment related to networking, computers and data storage, such as servers, hard drives, and ‘virtualization technologies’ that will form a cloud-computing infrastructure. Thereafter, a holistic service will be delivered by the two firms through a service joint-venture.
All this news is unofficial but it’s expected the deal will be finalized in the next couple of weeks.

Cloud Computing 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with cloud-computing, it refers to the storage and access of data from various areas over the internet. Customers can access the ‘cloud’ of data to enjoy computing services (through remote internet access), such as internet business (e-commerce), internet banking. As a result, the cost of accessing such services depends purely on usage. The diagram above shows the system's basic structure.

Internet security issues in cloud exist in the form of possible insecure user-access, not knowing where the data is actually being stored and whether it’s safe, but they can be solved by using secure-web browsers, well defined terms of reference and data encryption.

Benefit of this Venture

The venture will be profitable for both firms involved since cloud computing is expected to become very popular in the coming years. Cisco is already leading the networking equipment market, and this endeavor will help it penetrate servers market, which it entered earlier this year and EMC will simply stabilize its position in the cloud-computing market.

The two firms have experience working together in the past, which will help this venture. Cisco also sells storage devices made by EMC and partially owns VMware, a company that makes virtualization software and works under EMC’s management.

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Sources: Reuters, Cloud Buzz, IB Times, Info World, Education ERP (Image)