Cisco VP talks of data center strategy

Cisco Vice President of IT John Manville discusses the company's data center makeover strategy, the migration to the company's own Unified Computing System, the benefits of cloud and the new IT organizational structure with Network World Editor in Chief John Dix. (Also see Cisco bets big on new Texas data center.)

Cisco's top 10 rivals

Cisco is making some big investments in data centers.  What's the background?

Cisco Vice President of IT John Manville discusses the company's data center makeover strategy, the migration to the company's own Unified Computing System, the benefits of cloud and the new IT organizational structure with Network World Editor in Chief John Dix. (Also see Cisco bets big on new Texas data center.)

Cisco's top 10 rivals

Cisco is making some big investments in data centers.  What's the background?

About three years ago we decided we needed to treat our data centers in a more strategic way, so we put together a cross-functional team and they developed, over about a six-month period, this 200-page strategy. It was taken up to the investment committee of Cisco's board because there was a request for a fairly substantial amount of investment in data centers to make sure we had sufficient capacity, resiliency, and could transform ourselves to make sure we could help Cisco grow and make our customers successful.

Was UCS on the drawing boards by that point?

We knew about it.  It wasn't public and you had to sign an internal NDA, but we didn't know many details so the strategy is relatively high level and was built flexibly enough so we could take advantage of the technology without dramatically changing the overall strategy.

Does the document address timing?

It's hard to forecast for 10 years, but because of the amount of money involved we said this is between a five- to 10-year strategy.  

And you're three years into it now?

It took us six to nine months to get all the agreement required, but we're between two to two-and-a-half years into it. Part of the strategy was to build data centers or partner with companies that have data centers and we bundled the investment decisions in phases and got agreement for Bundle 1.

Bundle 1 mostly involved building the new data center in the Dallas area (see story) and also addressing needs in North Carolina and in California.  And then Bundle 2, which we're in the middle of, involves building a data center and getting a partner site in Amsterdam so we can have an Active/Active capability there as well.

There is a Bundle 3 for something in the Asia Pacific region if the business requirements and latency requirements require that we have something there.

Active/Active being the ability to have two data centers simultaneously support critical apps for resiliency sake, right?  That was spelled out in the strategy?  

Yes. The two data centers in Texas [one that had just been overhauled and a new one that is just being completed now] are configured as Metro Virtual Data Centers (MVDC). So they're basically joined together. The strategy laid out that foundation, but that was really the second layer. The first layer is around capacity. We have to get the right capacity and then use that capacity in the right way, make sure it's fully optimized. The resiliency piece – the Active/Active – said that with some of our applications we have to increase the overall resiliency because customers expect that and we need to be able to accommodate growth.