Cisco Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO) have unveiled significant updates to its network-based storage virtualization solutions that will help Cisco and a wide variety of independent software vendors (ISVs) jointly address key customer pain points related to storage provisioning, data migration/replication, backup/ recovery, disk capacity utilization, and storage management costs.

Cisco enables these new solutions, or "Intelligent Fabric Applications," based on open standards such as Fabric Application Interface Standard (FAIS), which has the goal of delivering a common framework for implementing storage applications in storage area networks (SANs). Cisco's commitment to standards will help foster industry-wide interoperability to provide customers more flexibility in choosing the best solution for their business/IT requirements while driving down the total costs associated with managing their data.

In practical terms, Cisco, through the Cisco MDS 9000, provides an open, standards-based platform with the necessary hardware-assist required to help enable high-performance Intelligent Fabric Applications--such as network-based volume management, remote replication, and continuous data protection--from third-party storage software vendors. These Intelligent Fabric Applications also support the Cisco Business Ready Data Center, an end-to-end network architecture that includes the data network, the storage network, data center connectivity solutions, and integrated intelligent services