Going by the latest reports, the current week may witness the materialization of a long-rumored tie-up between Cisco systems and EMC. The alliance - between the networking biggie and server aspirant Cisco Systems and the storage powerhouse and VMware owner EMC - will result in bringing forth bundled computing gear and services.

With the $350-billion-a-year market for core computing products, consulting and maintenance being currently dominated Hewlett-Packard (HP) and IBM, Cisco’s partnership with EMC and EMC’s majority-owned VMware would likely cause quite a few ripples. At present, Cisco is way behind its competitors in terms of the flexible and cost-effective ‘virtualization’ technique.

Rumors mills have, in the recent past, been abuzz with the reports of a proposed joint venture between Cisco and EMC. The venture would reportedly take assets from both companies and create its own sales force and channel for the aim of marketing virtualized data centers, along with offering integrated support and custom services to large data center operators.

Noting that the Cisco-EMC joint venture will essentially package EMC storage gear, VMware management tools and Cisco networking and computing products with dedicated services, the Cisco CEO John Chambers informed the Financial Times that the tie-up would probably be the most strategically-significant technology merger over a decade.

Chambers added: “This is about changing the industry. The play is $85 billion in terms of market opportunity!”