Cisco (CSCO), NetApp (NTAP) and VMware (VMW) have announced they are expanding their long-standing collaboration to deliver new design architectures that help customers evolve virtualized data centers to be more efficient, dynamic and secure.

The three companies introduced an end-to-end Secure Multi-tenancy Design Architecture that provides enhanced security in cloud environments by isolating the IT resources and applications of different clients, business units or departments that share a common IT infrastructure. As part of their collaboration, Cisco, NetApp and VMware will also offer a cooperative support model for these pretested and validated design architectures to help customers quickly build a unified, virtualized infrastructure.

“It’s clear that a tremendous opportunity exists for Cisco, NetApp and VMware to enable real change in the data center,” said Tom Georgens, president and CEO of NetApp. “Our visions are aligned around the concept of a dynamic data center that will be the foundation of cloud computing and that will enable enterprises, integrators and service providers to deliver IT as a service (ITaaS). In this scenario, IT becomes a dynamic asset that is more efficient and can better adapt to changing business needs. This new era of IT has stringent infrastructure requirements that our companies are ready to meet today – together.”

Secure Multi-tenancy Design Architecture is an end-to-end, validated design architecture that isolates IT resources for enhanced security in shared virtual and enterprise cloud environments. The design architecture helps enterprise customers, systems integrators and service providers develop internal and external cloud services that isolate clients, business units, departments or security zones for enhanced security across the computing, networking, storage and management layers of a unified infrastructure. The Secure Multi-tenancy Design Architecture provides details about implementing and configuring the architecture, as well as best practices for building and managing solutions from Cisco, NetApp and VMware. This validated design architecture increases business agility by helping IT administrators to establish the appropriate quality of service for each resource layer and to deliver consistent service performance levels for the applications in each layer, said the companies.

The Secure Multi-tenancy Design Architecture is based on Cisco Nexus Series Switches and the Cisco Unified Computing System, NetApp FAS storage with MultiStore, and VMware vSphere and vShieldTM Zones. The design reference architecture has been jointly tested and validated as a Cisco Validated Design so customers can assess their needs and deploy integrated solutions from Cisco, NetApp and VMware that meet the stringent requirements of their dynamic data centers.

As part of this collaboration, Cisco, NetApp and VMware also introduced a global 24-hour cooperative support model. This model offers customers a more streamlined response from Cisco, NetApp and VMware to identify and solve potential issues related to the solutions used in the Secure Multi-tenancy Design Architecture.