Last week, as part of vForum Australia, Cisco in collaboration with partners NetApp and VMware were pleased to host a media roundtable with Sydney Opera House and ME Bank in attendance to share their journeys as they roll out a Cisco, NetApp and VMware data centre platform.

The roll out of FlexPod is the latest initiative for ME Bank on a quest to improve efficiencies, increase customer numbers and provide better value to its customers over the next three years. Importantly, the data centre platform will allow ME Bank to quickly test new service applications in development environments in a matter of minutes. Previously, it would take weeks to create test and development environments. With the rise of social media, and smart banking applications this upgrade could not be more timely.

The FlexPod platform will also support ME Bank's Workplace Banking Kiosks which include Cisco TelePresence endpoints and are being piloted in the workplaces of ME Bank customers around Melbourne. The Cisco TelePresence endpoints will enable customers to have virtual face-to-face conversations with banking specialists.

With its partner VMtech, the Sydney Opera House uses its Cisco, NetApp and VMware data centre platform to support its Web site, ticketing, CRM and event management applications. With 8.2 million visitors a year and as "master ticket seller" to its shows, 50 percent of which it produces itself, the scalability, simplified management, high density memory and high performance capabilities of Cisco UCS were important to the Sydney Opera House.