May 23, 2010 – Cisco Systems has been granted a contract from the Saudi Telecom Company (STC) to introduce Managed Data Center services to the Saudi market. Cisco’s partner Wipro will deliver the services, which include the first Vblock Infrastructure Package (VIP) awarded to Cisco in the Middle East. VIP involves strategic collaboration combining best-of-breed virtualization, networking, and computing and storage technologies from Cisco, EMC, and VMware with end-to-end vendor accountability. Cisco Managed Data Center services will enable STC to keep pace with changes in new technologies, application architectures, regulations, efficiency focus, and application and workload demands. The new services will also help to lower power costs and manage and measure STC’s information technology expenses while increasing support for virtual desktops and mission-critical applications.