Founded in 2009 as a joint venture between EMC, VMware and Cisco, VCE is quickly emerging as a leader in the converged infrastructure space. The vendor is now looking to accelerate its growth with new solutions for resource-intensive environments.

The freshly unveiled Vblock System 340 marries XtremSW flash cache with Cisco’s B420 M3 blade servers and Nexus 3048 switch, EMC VNX arrays and the latest version of vSphere. VCE claims that the system offers up four times the performance and twice the capacity of the original Vblock 330.

The 340 is joined by an Oracle box dubbed Vblock Specialized System for High Performance Databases, and an all-flash Specialized System for Extreme Applications. The latter appliance is aimed primarily at enterprise-scale VDI deployments.

The new Vblocks will ship with Vision Intelligent Operations 2.5, the newest release of VCE’s management software. The platform offers automated patching for individual components and proactive update checks, as well as native network discovery through vCenter.

The portfolio refresh was announced in conjunction with new Cloud Accelerator services and a reworked partner program that introduces reward tiers.

Wikibon senior analyst Stu Miniman believes that the true value of converged infrastructure lies in its simplicity. VCE was not the first firm to enter this market, but it has nonetheless secured a dominant position in the cloud provider space. The joint venture is now leading the charge on flash adoption.

Converged infrastructure solutions such as VCE’s “build a stable foundation that extends the value of virtualization up the stack to meet the needs of application owners and new business requires,” Miniman highlights in his latest Wikibon entry. This value proposition empowers CIOs to “spend extra time in understanding requirements and choosing a strong strategic partner that deliver significant savings in operations for years to come.”