Capellas To Lead EMC-Cisco Cloud Venture

Michael Capellas has been around the block. Now he’s going to be taking enterprise customers for a tour of the cloud.

The longtime technology industry veteran was named as the first CEO of Acadia, the joint EMC and Cisco Systems’ cloud computing and virtualization venture that’s also picked up chipmaker Intel and virtualization software leader VMware as investors.

The one-time CEO of Compaq and First Data Corp. will be charged with spearheading the group’s push to sell Vblock, a pre-integrated and pre-tested cloud computing package for virtualized data centers.

Enterprise Storage Forum takes a closer look at appointment and how Capellas’ familiarity with all the moving software, hardware and storage pieces required to make a virtual data center work will come in handy for the consortium as looks to establish a leadership position in the cloud.

EMC (NYSE: EMC) and Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) are showing they’re serious about their joint “Acadia venture” by naming industry veteran Michael Capellas to run the new organization.

The venture, which also includes EMC subsidiary VMware (NYSE: VMW), was set up to sell and support “Vblock” systems that combine Cisco’s Unified Computing Systems (UCS) and switches, EMC storage and security and VMware virtualization technology.

The appointment of Capellas as CEO of Acadia suggests big ambitions for what the companies call the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition, which also includes investment from Intel (NASDAQ: INTC).

Read the full story at Enterprise Storage Forum:


EMC, Cisco Name Capellas to Lead Acadia Private Cloud Venture