UPDATE (10/22/14): EMC confirmed on Wednesday that its VCE converged infrastructure joint venture with Cisco and VMware is heading into a new phase, with EMC taking control of the business and Cisco drastically cutting its stake in it.

“Expected to be finalized this quarter, VCE will become an EMC business. Cisco and VMware will continue as strategic partners and investors, with Cisco having an approximately 10% equity interest in VCE,” according to an EMC statement, which emphasizes VCE’s focus on helping customers deploy hybrid clouds.

Cisco had owned a 35% stake in the venture, and EMC’s ownership now rises to 80%. EMC was able to squeeze a canned quote from Cisco CEO John Chambers on the change: “VCE represents another example of Cisco’s strategy of aggressively investing to drive key market transitions. VCE was created to positively disrupt data center architectures utilizing Cisco’s UCS and Nexus platforms, and we have been thrilled with the execution, results and customer demand the VCE team has delivered.  I look forward to the next chapter of VCE’s evolution and Cisco’s continued commitment in VCE as a crucial route to market for Cisco’s next-generation technologies for the data center and cloud.”

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