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Publication Date: 2026-02-16 12:30:00
Cisco looks set to take further advantage of the disgruntlement at VMware with a dedicated hypervisor for its own applications.
Dubbed NFVIS-for-UC (Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure Software for Unified Communications), the Linux-based offering provides end-to-end support across Cisco applications and hardware. The move would eliminate the need for VMware’s ESXi bare-metal hypervisor, which users previously relied on for Cisco Unified Communications (UC) applications.
The offering was teased last October as a lightweight VMware alternative, with the networking giant touting it as a means to simplify virtualization and collaboration workloads.
It’s marketed at organizations with between200 to 5,000 users, but can be used with deployments of any size, while also hawked as a “natural fit” for use in air-gapped or regulated environments. The hypervisor is set to hit general availability in Q1, with plans to extend support for Nutanix AHV (Acropolis Hypervisor) later this year.
A virtualization guide, which explains how to use the offering, dropped earlier this month, as spotted by The Register.
NFVIS-for-UC joins Cisco’s FlashStack into the fray
The launch of Cisco’s own hypervisor comes amid growing industry animosity around VMware following Broadcom’s acquisition and the subsequent VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) revamp.
For Cisco, NFVIS-for-UC marks the second effort to de-risk customers from VMware, following the debut of FlashStack, a joint offering from…
