"BladeSystem customers are looking to HP for solutions that easily integrate into existing environments," said Jim Ganthier, vice president of marketing, Industry Standard Servers and Software at HP, in a statement. "This new solution allows industry-standard collaboration options for enterprises choosing HP BladeSystem c-Class infrastructure."

"This is all about customer demand and supporting our Cisco networking customers," says Soni Jiandani, senior vice president of Cisco's Server, Access and Virtualization Technology Group. "Both HP and Cisco recognize that we have a large base of joint customers. Many customers have HP servers and enclosures while investing in Cisco's networking infrastructure. For those customers, it is important to ensure they have choice. Cisco has traditionally been a part of the HP BladeSystem portfolio with Catalyst 3020 and 3120 series and the MDS9124 Fabric Switches and we are now extending this to the Nexus FEX for HP BladeSystem."

The Cisco Fabric Extender for HP BladeSystem is available now from HP. Pricing begins at $9,799.

in Network World's Data Center section.