Brian Christensen, Cisco's IT infrastructure director for data center systems, said rather than use the already adopted phrases for the automatic provisioning of IT infrastructure, he prefers the term "flexible data center" to describe what can viewed as a "service-oriented data center", a concept Cisco IT has focused on for the past three years.

Christiansen, who said his job gives him the viewpoint of "an end user, not a vendor", is in Sydney for the EMC Inform conference. "[Cisco's CEO] John Chambers expects IT to enable business strategy and productivity within the company."

Christensen said in finding ways to collaborate in a "flattened world", the data center is becoming central to the provisioning of all services.

"At Cisco, we like to use the network to automate services [so] internally I created an application called service-oriented data center to provision storage, computing power, and networks for applications," he said.

With Cisco's data center transforming the way the vendor works, Christensen said, it is assisting the fast opening of new offices around the world as the company expands into new markets.