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James McGibney, data center lead at Tutor Perini, inserts a blade server into a rack, part of Cisco's Unified Computing System. The construction firm was the first customer to deploy UCS at its data center.
Global product orders from technology giant Cisco in the first quarter of the company's fiscal year 2010 (its most recently completed quarter) were down, when compared to the same period last year but the numbers showed an improvement from the previous quarter.
In a statement, the company's CEO John Chambers attributed most of the quarterly growth in global orders to the US market. Within that market, the enterprise sector was responsible for the biggest chunk of product orders from Cisco – showing substantial year-over-year growth. Small year-over-year gains were made in sales to the public sector, while the company's service-provider and commercial client categories in the US showed sales number lower than one year ago.
The Japanese market showed signs of improvement during the quarter, while Cisco's emerging markets “continued to experience challenges,” Chambers said.
Cisco's revenues from first-quarter sales totaled about $9 billion, or about 13 percent down from about $10.3 billion during the same quarter one year ago. Its net income during the quarter was about $1.8 billion – down about 19 percent from about $2.2 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2009.
The company announced two major acquisitions during the quarter: IP-based mobile infrastructure solution manufacturer Starent and video-conferencing system provider Tandberg.
Cisco's most recent quarterly earnings report came on the heels of its announcement of a new partnership with EMC and VMware (majority-owned by EMC) to jointly provide an integrated full-stack IT solution.
Dubbed Vblock, the solution will consist of Cisco's Unified Computing System (servers and networking equipment), EMC's storage equipment and VMware's virtualization software. EMC subsidiary RSA will provide security solutions for the system.
Cisco rolled UCS out in March and the first customer deployment announcement came in September, after construction company Tutor Perini installed UCS in its new data center as part of a data center consolidation project.
For Cisco, partnership with EMC opens another avenue for selling the system.
Joining the Virtual Computing Environment coalition (name of the new partnership) is also a step in pursuing further expansion in the market for virtualization solutions – one of three “market adjacencies” Cisco has been focusing on and is planning to continue focusing on in the near future.
The other two are video and collaboration. The Tandberg acquisition was Cisco's most recent play in both of those areas.
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Keywords: Cisco, UCS, quarterly earnings, Virtual Computing Environment coalition, EMC, VMware, virtualization, cloud computing | | 
