Hyper-convergence will be commoditised, says Nutanix president

The pendulum of IT has always swung between two polar opposites – centralised control of IT operations (think mainframes) and decentralised management via servers and PCs in what is known as client-server architecture.

As more organisations bought into the client-server story, server and storage sprawl started to creep up, leading to the advent of virtualisation software, which helps to consolidate servers and improve efficiency.

In recent years, the rise of hyper-convergence has taken consolidation to a new level by abstracting and embedding storage and networking into the compute tier via software, complete with backup, snapshots, data deduplication and other capabilities.

In an interview with Computer Weekly, Sudheesh Nair, president of hyper-convergence software supplier #Nutanix, talks about the future of #hyperconvergence, its relation with the cloud, and the company’s challenges in building its business in Asia.

Hyper-convergence seems to be all the rage these days. Do you see it being commoditised at some point?

Hyper-convergence will become commoditised – there’s no doubt about it. But that is not new in our industry. About 10 years ago, when #DataDomain was started, deduplication was a business that no one else had and they built on it. Today, deduplication has become a feature for many companies in the data storage business. Commoditisation, however, is happening significantly faster. What used to take 10 years to commoditise could take just two to three years – and that’s good news for customers.

Nutanix’s view is very different. We did not begin this company with the end-game of delivering hyper-converged solutions. Rather, we started with the idea that infrastructure complexity had to be eliminated and made storage invisible. Then, three years ago, we went to the next level and made virtualisation invisible. The next step for us would be to make the cloud invisible. So, in our journey, we are not afraid if people expect hyper-convergence to just work and become commoditised, because our approach and destination are different.

Is that why you are rallying the company around the Enterprise Cloud Platform?

Yes, but there are two things about cloud that people need to internalise. First, cloud is something that lives inside a datacentre owned by the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Singtel. It’s infrastructure that I rent from someone else. Tomorrow’s cloud will be different – it will not be contained within a single datacentre. This has happened before – mainframes used to sit inside datacentres, accessible only via dumb terminals. But what happened next was the emergence of client-server architecture that eventually disrupted mainframes. Similarly, the capabilities of cloud today will bleed out, be miniaturised and reside in internet of things (IoT) devices, such as cars and drones.

When we think about the Enterprise Cloud Platform, it’s basically the data fabric that starts in the cloud and extends to edge devices, as well as the control fabric that manages, automates and orchestrates workloads between the datacentre and the edge. Second, we think cloud should be powered by applications. Take Apple, for example. It doesn’t sell you the cloud. It sells you unlimited music, but when you listen to that music, you are consuming it through the cloud. That invisibility of the cloud will be the future.

Today, some enterprises still operate their own datacentres and private cloud infrastructure for reasons such as security and data sovereignty. Do you think we will ever come to a point where most companies will rely entirely on the public cloud to run their business?

First, there will always be public cloud companies that will build their own technology, but there are also what we call community cloud providers catering to specific industries and geographies, such as an insurance cloud service provider that complies with insurance regulations in Singapore. Nutanix is focused on community cloud providers that want a cloud out of the box.

Second, think of public cloud suppliers as operating a buffet restaurant where you can have a spread. But not everyone wants to eat the same food, and Amazon is not going to change for those with unique requirements. But that does not mean you should go back to the stone age with a three-tiered architecture, and so on. Our bet is that whether you use the public cloud or private cloud, you can have the same experience.

http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Hyper-convergence-will-be-commoditised-says-Nutanix-president