This afternoon here in New Orleans at Microsoft's Tech Ed 2013 North America event Cisco was honored with two Best of Tech Ed (BoTE) awards for our innovation and technology.

Our Nexus 1000V switch for Microsoft Hyper-V was awarded with a Best of Tech Ed award in the 'Virtualization' category. Our FlexPod with Microsoft Private Cloud reference architecture, developed jointly with our strategic partner NetApp, was recognized with the Best of Tech Ed award in the "Systems Management" category.

This is the third year in a row that Cisco innovation has been recognized by the Tech Ed judges and attendees -a rare three-peat! In 2011 our UCS B250 solution was recognized with a BOTE award in the hardware category. In 2012 our UCS Manager platform was recognized with the BOTE Breakthrough Technology award.

Nexus 1000V extends Cisco's networking benefits to your Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V deployments. It offers a consistent operational model across your physical and virtual environments. As a distributed virtual switching platform, it provides advanced features and is tightly integrated with the Hyper-V Extensible Switch. Here's some very good blog post links from Cisco Product Manager Gary Kinghorn to help you learn more on our Nexus 1000V for Microsoft Hyper-V Switch -Blog 1, Blog 2.

FlexPod with Microsoft Private Cloud is a Microsoft validated Fast Track 3.0 reference architecture for Microsoft private clouds based on Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012. Developed and marketed with our strategic storage partner NetApp, FlexPod with Microsoft Private Cloud can help to jumpstart your IT. infrastructure projects for Windows Server 2012 with confidence and support. Here's a Cisco Data Center guest blog on FlexPod from NetApp Product Manager Calvin Neih.

To learn more about Cisco's award-winning Microsoft solutions and technologies please visit www.cisco.com/go/microsoft.