Unified Computing System Data Center Campaign OverviewMarketing Cheat Sheet

April 2015

“Your Data Center is Everywhere”

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Unified Computing System Data Center CampaignWhat is UCS? | Customer Drivers | Buyer Persona | Differentiators | Competitive Landscape | Portfolio | Messaging | Resources

The Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) is a groundbreaking data center platform designed for IT innovation and business acceleration. Cisco UCS integrates compute, network, and storage resources with centralized, application-centric management. Cisco UCS helps IT organizations dramatically improve their application performance and scalability, simplifies and automates data center operations, reduces costs, and improves business outcomes.

From one server, to hundreds of servers and thousands of virtual machines, the Cisco Unified Computing System is managed as a single system that decouples scale from complexity. Cisco UCS accelerates the delivery of new services simply, reliably, and securely through policy-based automation and leading infrastructure mobility for both virtualized and non-virtualized workloads. This unique, fabric-centric solution enables customers to:

§ Simplify infrastructure management§ Accelerate delivery of IT services to the business§ Reduce capital expenditures and operating expenses:

-77% reduction of ongoing management costs-53% reduction of power and cooling costs-77% reduction of cabling- 87% reduction in provisioning time

The future of IT is now with Cisco’s Unified Computing System

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Demand for IT innovation has never been higherMore applications and different applications are changing the demands on IT infrastructure. New technologies and operating models such as virtualization and cloud computing have impacted IT by creating significant opportunities for improved service delivery, while also enabling “shadow IT” in the lines of business.

Inefficiency of the Traditional Data CenterThe traditional model for data center investments is to build in silos — often with dedicated resources for lines of business — and to design the data center for peak environments. Unfortunately, this model has inherent inefficiencies because resources cannot be shared, and the majority of the time applications don’t maximize the capabilities of the server platform. This underutilization of resources drives up costs.

Increasing Demands on Limited ResourcesAs businesses realize the strategic advantages that technology can deliver, IT organizations continue to see an increase in requests for functionality that can make new products and services available to end customers. The biggest challenge for IT is that often 70-80 percent of their budget is consumed by maintenance activities. This includes managing existing assets, adds/moves/changes, system management, and keeping up with existing demands. When 80 percent of your resources are dedicated to “keeping the lights on” there is very little left for innovation.

Delivering IT as a ServiceThe best way to rebalance and improve the economics of the data center is to enable and deliver IT as a Service. If IT can move from its current methodology of addressing business needs with dedicated IT infrastructure to addressing business needs through more efficient, automated on-demand services, IT offerings can be more consistent, timely, and more responsive to business needs. In the past, the technology wasn’t fully available to enable IT as a Service. Now, capabilities such as virtualization and the cloud can help customers deliver these services more rapidly.

As the economics and capabilities of public cloud offerings mature, IT departments are increasingly playing dual roles as both providers and brokers of services. Initiatives that in the past were only opportunities to use data for business intelligence have become critical for business competitiveness. Also, now employees and customers expect to choose their own devices and modes to access the enterprise with always-on service delivery.

What’s Driving Cisco Customers?

Performance, efficiency, and flexibility at any scale

Applications

Whether you run traditional applications or intensive analytics, the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) integrated infrastructure delivers an enhanced user experience, performance and security, so your team can collaborate effectively anywhere, anytime.

Operations

With automated management processes, the choice of either private or hybrid cloud deployment, and pretested configurations that integrate compute, storage, network, and application capabilities —the UCS platform streamlines your IT design, implementation, integration, and operations.

Ecosystem

Our solutions incorporate technologies from both Cisco and the world’s leading software and storage companies. Plus, we test and validate critical business and data management applications, so you can deploy them with confidence. Our consolidated support can give you quick, consistent service for most issues when you need it most.

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The Best for Applications With Cisco UCS, customers can tune their environment to support the unique needs of each application, while powering their server workloads on a centrally managed, highly scalable system. The new Cisco UCS Invicta Series unlocks the full potential of applications to deliver peak performance and predictability, helping to deploy Flash memory technology with confidence.

A Platform for IT InnovationCisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure Solutions speed up IT operations today and create the modern technology foundation needed for initiatives like private cloud, big data, and desktop virtualization. Cisco UCS Director provides centralized automation of physical and virtual resources, helping to take full advantage of Cisco’s open ecosystem approach.

Superior EconomicsWith Cisco UCS Manager and Cisco SingleConnect Technology, hardware is automatically configured by application-centric policies, ushering in a new era of speed, consistency, and simplicity for data center operations. UCS brings the flexibility of virtualized systems to the physical world in a way no other server architecture can, lowering costs and improving ROI.

Key Differentiators.

A $52,437 Billion Total Available Marketplace Opportunity

Mapping Buyer Topics to What We Sell

1 2 3CXO > CIO + VP-IT

Center of Everything

You Define Your Business,You Define Your Applications,Now You Define Your Data Center. Triggers: Digital Business & IT Convergence

CIO > VP-IT + DC-M

Center of Tomorrow

From Agility To Automation, Cisco’s UCS Solutions Deliver Tomorrow’s Flexibility, Control & Scale Today.

Triggers: New Data Center Projects

VP-IT+ DC-M > SV-B + BA-B

Center of Performance

Don’t Simply Refresh,Don’t Accept Status Quo, Redefine Application Performance.

Triggers: Migration & Server Refresh

Focus >> Position Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructures as the foundation for future-proof Data Centers that drive business impact at every scale.

Focus >> Position server refresh cycles as the chance to redefine expectation and application performance with Cisco UCS, ACI and Application Partnerships.

Focus >> Connect the promise of the Internet of Everything to the data center innovations Cisco delivers – from UCS to ACI to Intercloud to strategic partners.

Buying Center

Cisco Unified Computing System Portfolio

Compute Network Storage VirtualizationManagement

and Automation

Fourth Generation

UCS ServersUCS Invicta

CORE DATA CENTER WORKLOADS

UCS Mini

UCS M-Series Modular Servers

UCS C3160

APP

UCS Key Messaging.

Partner Message

It: Cisco UCS Server Solutions is a groundbreaking data center platform for software management and services across the plan-build-manage IT lifecycle.

Does: UCS reduces costs, simplifies management, enhances application performance, and accelerates IT delivery to the business.

Means: UCS enables partners to deliver on IT innovation.

Action: Results in customer ability to redefine the economics and business potential of their data center.

Customer Message

It: Cisco UCS Server Solutions is a groundbreaking data center platform for software management and services across the plan-build-manage IT lifecycle.

Does: UCS reduces costs, simplifies management, enhances application performance, and accelerates IT delivery to the business.

Means: UCS enables Cisco customers to deliver on IT innovation.

Action: Customers can redefine the economics and business potential of their data center.

25 Words The Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) is a groundbreaking data center architecture designed for IT innovation and business acceleration.

50 Words The Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) is a groundbreaking data center platform designed for IT innovation and business acceleration. Cisco UCS automates integrated server, network, and storage resources with centralized, application-centric management. Cisco UCS helps IT organizations dramatically improve application performance and scalability, simplifies and automates data center operations, reduces costs, and improves business outcomes.

Key Differentiators.UCS Competitive Landscape.

Hewlett Packard § Cisco’s Unified Fabric allows sharing of resources, better power efficiency, lower latency and faster

transaction times than HP’s legacy bladed architecture, which requires that customers overprovision, forcing the purchase of one in-chassis switch for every eight blades.

§ HP has a disjointed portfolio. Their platforms like Moonshot and Apollo have a different fabric from Bladesystem and cannot be managed from HP’s OneView management tool.

§ HP is emphasizing a comprehensive ConvergedSystem lineup to compete with Cisco partnerships like FlexPod, VCE, and VersaStack.

Dell§ Dell often attempts to differentiate on upfront price rather than features or TCO.§ During the past few years, Dell has had a confusing management strategy. Active System Manager (which is

the current tool to provide templates and automation) does not support their latest server platform, FX2.§ FX2 architecture is incredibly dense, but few data centers can support the power consumption of several

chassis in a rack. FX2 repackages rack servers with either a cabling mess out the back, or two IO aggregators for every 2U.

§ Dell has abandoned their previous integrated infrastructure strategy in favor of their small VRTX box for ROBO, and FX2 for almost everything else.

IBM/Lenovo§ Lenovo has lost significant blade and integrated infrastructure market share in the transition from IBM.

What Lenovo does sell is at a lower price point. Lenovo is having difficulty demonstrating value for their enterprise products.

§ There are no compelling new management features for FlexSystem in over a year and Lenovo produced a VSPEX architecture with EMC with zero advanced management functionality.

§ IBM is now an enthusiastic partner with UCS and Nexus in VersaStack integrated infrastructure.

Internal

Campaign Central

Market Insights: Buyer Personas

External

Data Center and Virtualization

Data Center: Case Studies

Data Center: Unified Computing

Data Center: Unified Fabric

Data Center: Unified Management

Tomorrow Starts Here: Data Center

Key Resources.