I’ve been pushing like mad for the VSPEX Cisco Validated Designs from the moment the VSPEX launch occurred. While VSPEX is a program where the partner picks their elements, and EMC helps them validate the design and supports the partner go-to-market – the partners are voting with their choice – and I’m not surprised at all that they have been clamoring for Cisco UCS and Nexus based designs.
… And when it comes to Cisco partners – there’s a gold standard they expect – a Cisco Validated Design. These take time (the Cisco team started right before the VSPEX launch), but are worth it – they provide a level of detail and specificity that is useful.
Partners – the Cisco Validated Design (CVD) docs for VSPEX are here!
Feedback as always, is welcome!
It’s always worth noting that our view is that there are 3 paths to cloud models for our customers:
- Classic mix & match of open systems and software. All assembly is up to the customer.
- Reference Architectures, partners integrate. VSPEX falls into this category.
- Converged Infrastructure, pre-assembled, ready to go. VCE Vblock falls into this category.
Customers tend to dig #3 when they just want to get onto the business of business. People tend to dig #1 when they want ultimate flexibility, and dig #2 when they want a mix of both – and have a trusted partner they have used in the past for integration.
There’s a lot of kerfuffle (and always has been) about the dynamic of Cisco, EMC, VMware – three industry leaders. Yes, VMware acquired Nicira. Yes, some elements of the landscape are always shifting. We have a sense of humor about it :-) Watch the outtake from the VMworld 2012 video Dom Delfino – a good friend – at Cisco was doing with Jeremiah Dooley (VCE) and I… Skip to 30 seconds in :-)
It’s perhaps worth commenting on something that drives me bananas: shoddy reporting. It’s of course open for anyone to have an opinion (and hey, speculating on industry giants dancing as partners is prone to generate opinions) – but I laugh anytime people position facts totally wrong. One example is VCE profitability – a recent thing some folks speculate on by looking at financial statements. They are wrong. The way the VCE joint venture is structured, all profits flow back to the parents (Cisco, EMC, VMware), so the measure of VCE and Vblock success is revenue, which continues to climb towards the $1B mark.
So – with that said, what’s new in VCE Vblock land?
- Day one support for the vCloud 5.1 Suite. This is a huge effort – it takes thousands of man-hours for Vblocks to get revved. While vSphere 5.1 isn’t out quite yet (any day now) – for our Vblock customers, it highlights a commitment to the value proposition that drove them to select Vblock in the first place. Single support, single converged system, pre-assembled, pre-tested.
- Simplified basic platform API integration. Below the level of system and service management that most people think of as “management”, VCE and Vblock customers need a basic “Vblock system BIOS”. This needs to handle the most elemental level of component discovery, fault management – and presenting an integrated API for Vblock – one that can be integrated with by anyone. Jeremiah describes this here.
- Expanding management options. On top of the basic “Vblock BIOS”, rich automation and management options are important. At VMworld, VCE demonstrated vCenter Orchestrator and vCenter Operations integration. They also demonstrated integration with Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud (CIAC) suite. When customers select converged infrastructure – integrated management and operations (including ultimate service management) is a huge part of the value proposition. EMC’s Unified Infrastructure Manager (both Provisioning and Operations) are one option – there are others… I saw a neat demo from Cloupia that had a great iPad UI, as an example. I think VCE building this very low-level API and making it an integral part of Vblock will accelerate this trend – which is a good thing for customers. [update!] Check out the Cloupia demo below:
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.