If it's mid-July then it is time once again for Microsoft's annual worldwide partner conference -WPC. For 2014, we find Cisco's Microsoft team in Washington D.C. joining around ~16,000 other Microsoft partners. The partners come from all around the world and are of all partner types be they VARs, local System Integrators, Global System Integrators, or OEMs. They have come to D.C. to learn what Microsoft has up their sleeves for the upcoming year as well as to hear Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella give his first major WPC keynote. This is Cisco's fourth consecutive year of WPC sponsorship -from L.A. to Toronto to Houston and now to Washington D.C. -we have amped up our investment year over year to showcase our leading datacenter technologies for the Microsoft ecosystem.

This year, in our booth#801 at the show, we will showcase Cisco's foundational datacenter technologies centered on Cisco UCS, Nexus, and our UCS Manager integration with System Center. These provide a solid foundation that supports our integrated infrastructure solutions such as FlexPod with the Microsoft Private Cloud and emerging solutions such as our Invicta sold state systems; ACI our Application Centric Infrastructure architecture; and SQL Server consolidation offerings. Driving Cisco forward in the world of Microsoft in 2015 will be three key solution areas:

Modernize Your Data Center

Here with Windows Server 2003 support ending it's time to move to a modern platform built on Windows Server 2012, System Center 2012, and Cisco UCS infrastructure. By upgrading your customer's environment today you can help to reduce their IT costs, improve serve delivery, and avoid the challenges associated with maintaining a legacy platform. Microsoft and Cisco, two giants in the enterprise infrastructure and cloud space, have come together to provide customers with highly integrated solutions built around openness and choice of their hardware and software offerings, that meets customers' existing needs while helping them plan for the future.

Take Your Journey to the Private Cloud

Together we believe that Cisco and Microsoft deliver a private cloud solution that enables IT organizations to be more flexible, efficient and agile through industry leading technologies and seamless management and automation across the datacenter. For example, FlexPod for Microsoft Private Cloud modernizes the datacenter through an integrated infrastructure that can rapidly deploy new workloads and services to users on demand while reducing overall IT costs and datacenter footprint. Built on Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012, Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) servers and NetApp storage, FlexPod delivers a highly flexible and scalable private cloud and a foundation for hybrid cloud service models

Cisco UCS + SQL Server 2014

Cisco UCS is a proven modern, simple and cost effective platform that provides an optimal infrastructure for Microsoft SQL 2014 deployments. Our SQL Server solutions provides a uniquely differentiated architecture with advanced integration at every level in the stack: compute, network, I/O, virtualization and management.  Tight Integration with Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2 and PowerShell deliver seamless management and automation of the datacenter-enabling IT organizations to become more flexible, efficient and agile. Leverage UCS unified computing capabilities and enterprise-ready performance to consolidate complex SQL deployments to drive scalability, provisioning and high availability. With unmatched management tools, simplify IT operations and reduce TCO at the platform, site and organizational levels while increasing efficiency and application throughput.

So if you are at WPC 2014 this week please stop by booth#801 and speak to our Subject Matter Experts. Also, please visit our WPC 2014 Cisco site for information on speaking sessions and booth demos. As always, to learn more please visit www.cisco.com/go/microsoft.