CRN Exclusive: Scale Computing Forms Partnership With APC Giving Partners A 'Powerful' Micro Data Center 'In-A-Box' Solution

@ScaleComputing has formed a new partnership with @APC by @Schneider Electric to create a turnkey #hyperconverged solution that executives say will lead to higher margins for channel partners and enable solution providers to scale capacity and computing power at the edge quickly. "This is pretty powerful," said Bill Barnier, sales manager at Bloomfield Hills, Mich.- based solution provider Data Partner, who partners with Scale. "They can do power back up, the compute and the storage, all in one box. That's powerful to be able to put all of that in one appliance at the remote edge. That will definitely be something that customers would have interest in, especially those who have a lot of remote sites." Hyper-converged specialist Scale Computing has been chosen as an Alliance Partner by APC by Schneider Electric to support its hyper-converged Micro Data Center Xpress solution, which combines a purpose-built infrastructure with a physical management wrapper for hyper-converged architectures. Xpress is a complete and energy-efficient IT solution that is pre-tested, optimized, and able to be rapidly deployed. APC said it creates a reliable and robust environment to leverage the best of on-premises and multi-cloud infrastructures. [Related: Nutanix CEO On Cisco's Hardware Problem, Dell's Dual Hyper-Converged Strategy And Why He Doesn't View HPE-SimpliVity 'As A Competitor'] On the Scale Computing side, the company touts its HC3 hyper-converged platform as a data center in a box with server, storage and virtualization integrated into a single appliance. With no virtualization software to license and no external storage to buy, HC3 products reduce out-of-pocket costs and simplify the infrastructure needed to keep applications running. "If you order a Scale system, we can have you deploying virtual machines within 30 minutes after you unbox it. What we want to do is reduce that even further now with APC," said Jason Collier, co-founder of Scale, in an interview with CRN. "Going in and being able to put in this system very rapidly gives the partner additional services and additional products that they can offer at higher margins." [Sponsored Suggested Post: Veeam honored as 2017 ISV Partner of the Year at Cisco Partner Summit 2017 Cisco Partner Summit Global awards reflect the top-performing partners within specific technology markets across all geographical regions.] "We want to give channel partners something where it is exceptionally easy to deploy this micro-data center or edge data center component, and we have several methods in which we're going to take that to market," said Collier. In one customer use case, Scale is looking to deploy its own hyper-converged solution with Xpress inside a grocery store chain in Europe with 9,000 locations. "If we can just drop one of these things in at each one of those locations and it takes no time to set up and can even be preconfigured to the point where you can drop it in and turn it on, then basically that store is up – that's where in these larger distributed deployments it's going to make the channel partners way more efficient in being able to deliver those services to the end customers," said Collier. Data Partner's Barnier said the packaged solution would open up the doors to new customers. "A lot of companies are looking to have the local feel and touch," said Barnier. "We're doing software-defined WAN and we're trying to build out and put things at the edge – even the firewalls are going that way – security at the edge. So this is a really good offer."
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