Lenovo Leaps Forward With Next-generation Thinkagile Composable Cloud Platform

@Lenovo Data Center Group (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY), one of the fastest growing #hyperconvergedinfrastructure ( #HCI) vendors according to IDC, – with HCI revenue growing at almost twice the market growth rate in Q1 2018 (149.1% compared to 76.3%)—is further expanding its ThinkAgile portfolio to provide an innovative solution for customers who desire the agility of the #publiccloud and the security of a #privatecloud. To address this growing customer trend, Lenovo – together with @Cloudistics – has developed the #ThinkAgile CP Series composable cloud platform, a ‘cloud-in-a-box’ that offers all of the conveniences and ease-of-use of a public cloud environment secured behind the customer’s own #datacenter #firewall.   Lenovo ThinkAgile CP Series – with fully-integrated infrastructure, application marketplace and end-to-end automation of software-defined network, compute and storage – delivers a turnkey cloud experience that can be easily and centrally managed from anywhere through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) portal.   “As a global company that is unencumbered by legacy, Lenovo is uniquely positioned to not only listen to our customers and understand their pain points, but also develop revolutionary solutions that eliminate IT roadblocks and accelerate their business growth,” said Roderick Lappin, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Marketing of Lenovo Data Center Group. “The ThinkAgile CP Series is another example of how Lenovo is driving the industry forward by enabling customers to truly own their cloud experience in a secure, scalable and streamlined way.”   “Cloudistics’ private cloud computing platform cuts down application deployment cycles by 90%, which translates to faster time to revenue,” said Najaf Husain, Chief Executive Officer of Cloudistics. “We make private clouds as easy to use as the public cloud but with the control and performance enterprise customers want. Our partnership with Lenovo enables us to unleash a next-generation composable cloud platform to the market that is easy to implement, deploy, operate, maintain and support.”   The ThinkAgile CP Series features fully integrated high availability, backup, remote replication, usage metering, live help and support and multilayered, multitenant security. Customers can leverage a curated application marketplace (which they can extend with their own offerings) for rapid deployment and enjoy simple, plug-and-play scale-out of disaggregated units of compute and storage capacity. Lenovo ThinkAgile CP Series provides a premium experience for midmarket and enterprise customers seeking to take advantage of agile methodologies using a private cloud ecosystem. The platform is ideal for businesses or organizations that want the benefits of the public cloud, without compromising control, data security, application performance and service delivery.   “ICP had been an early adopter of the Cloudistics’ cloud platform as well as a Lenovo reseller. After hearing about these two companies coming together to deliver the Lenovo ThinkAgile CP Series, the entire ICP team jumped at the chance to position the new series to our valued customers,” said Sal Saglik, Director of Business Development, ICP Corp. “The ease of use, rapid deployment and scalability of ThinkAgile CP will allow us to deliver a cloud-like experience in a complete and secure solution without the costs and complexities of the public cloud.” “The simplicity of the platform significantly changed our work output,” said Scott Whitehouse, IT Director at Integreon. “We are able to easily import applications, assign cloud computing resources and launch applications on-demand based on our organizational needs in a fraction of the time it used to take us.” The Lenovo ThinkAgile CP Series is available through Lenovo and Cloudistics sales representatives and channel partners. Customer trials and proof-of-concept testing will begin in North America and Europe in August 2018 with further global rollout, including China, later this year. For more information, please visit http://www.lenovo.com/thinkagilecp

https://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=226681

Nutanix CEO on impressing Main Street, what he thinks about Dell's IPO and why he's 'getting comfortable being uncomfortable'

"I am a big student of history," said Nutanix's founder and chief executive Dheeraj Pandey, "and I am a fond believer of the adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same." The CEO's chosen maxim might seem a little out of place for a young company such as Nutanix which, in the scheme of things, has only just started to make waves in the hyperconverged space. But for Pandey, the phrase resonates with his ambition to turn the vendor's early success into something long lasting. History lessons have become regular events for Nutanix employees. The CEO said he regularly gathers his leadership team, often sitting on beanbags and couches, to learn from the biggest successes and failures of the industry over the last 30 years. "They're informal gatherings of our leaders. People call them off-sites but for us it is about doing a real, fun, content-rich activity which garners a lot of camaraderie. We do it really differently, and it is real production-quality stuff," said Pandey. "We bring a lot of people from outside the company - speakers and advisers and board members - and a lot of the time all we talk about is the history of IT in the last 20 to 30 years. "There's a lot to learn from what went on in that time. A lot of the off-sites are about learning from others who went through their own sagas to discover how things were back in the 90s or 2000s, and to learn about the highs and lows of other giant companies." Staying power Nutanix is only nine years old, and has been publicly listed for a little over 18 months, but it is clear that Pandey possesses an acute awareness of what it will take for Nutanix to become a long-lasting monolith of the IT industry. He draws inspiration from the term "antifragile" - coined by author Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book Antifragility - in his ambitions for what he hopes Nutanix will become. Pandey explained that antifragility stems from a system which thrives on volatility and disorder, only to emerge stronger than ever before. He almost welcomes, and is excitedly anticipating, hardships that Nutanix will inevitably encounter, and aspires to be the CEO of a company that has stared down the barrel of failure, in whatever form it may take. "One thing we absolutely have a conviction on is companies that grow from small to mid-sized to large firms. One thing that is common about these companies is this idea of staying power. How do you actually get staying power? The only way you get staying power is if you understand that there are highs and lows in life, and when the lows existed for many of these companies, they knew how to improve and how to get better from the lows," he said. "Antifragile is a state of mind; it is part of the journey, not a destination. If you think about Amazon as a company, their stock went down by 50 per cent three times in their journey. They've had to face two big shocks - one being the recession of 1999 and the other the financial crisis of 2008. If you think about Microsoft and its own antifragility with the Department of Justice, there are all sorts of things that the best companies in the world have gone through." "Even Facebook, just six months ago, with privacy and Cambridge Analytica, going and asking for forgiveness, look what they're going through right now." Relearning how to lead Something that Pandey shares with the CEOs of industry giants Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft is his tech pedigree. Having studied computer science at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, Pandey went on to study at the University of Texas in 1997, but dropped out after a year. He then worked as a software developer at Trilogy Software, and took on various engineering and developer roles at Zambeel, Oracle and Aster Data Systems before founding Nutanix in 2009. Discussing the general trend of many vendor giants choosing tech-oriented leaders, Pandey observed that the role of the CEO, as well as the boardroom environment within tech companies, has drastically changed over the last five years. "Back in the 90s, boardrooms were very different - it was all about chest thumping and braggadocio and it was actually a very inauthentic environment," he said. "In the last five years, with social media and millennials, for a lot of different reasons, CEOs today are really supposed to connect more with Main Street as opposed to just catering to Wall Street. "When you have to stay connected to Main Street, you have to be humble, you have to be hungry and you have to be paranoid, and be very honest about things. Because Main Street doesn't give a hoot about what your stock price is. It is demanding more authenticity from itself - from CEOs down, we are having to think about the consumer all the time. That is a great development for our industry."

The paradox of publicly listed life

Pandey also opened up about new challenges stemming from Nutanix's IPO in September 2016. He said that as CEO he has had to strike a balance between impressing Main Street, Nutanix's customers and partners, and Wall Street.

Being a public company is often associated with having to deliver on short-term targets, rather than being afforded the freedom to pursue long-term goals. Pandey said that Nutanix's new status as a public company has created a new dilemma for Nutanix: balancing paradoxes in leadership.

"That is something we've been doing with our executive management team - the fact that leadership is seen in paradoxes. One of our key principles is: we need to get comfortable being uncomfortable," he said.

However, it is hard to imagine Nutanix as anything but comfortable, judging how the vendor has performed on the stock market since its debut.

Its IPO was the largest VC-based IPO in the US in 2016, reaching an exceptional $5.08bn valuation after opening-day shares soared by 133 per cent.

Nutanix's share price has risen by 39 per cent since its debut, and it now has a market cap of $8.8bn.

"I quite enjoy being a public company and being a public company CEO," Pandey said.

"Even though many people bemoan the fact they are public and their hands are tied, I feel like the stock market is quite a democratic system. It lets you really think about your dream, your vision, your marathon, as long as you continue to deliver on the sprints. They might not care about the marathon themselves but if you can make it look like a marathon of sprints, then very large companies can be successful as a public company, which is what we are trying to do."

The CEO @DheerajPandey extended his favourable disposition towards publicly listed life to the latest news from @DellTechnologies. @MichaelDell only recently confirmed rumours that Dell is planning a return to the stock exchange through a stockholder buyout of @VMware tracking stock. Despite the Dell CEO often speaking openly about the benefits of private ownership, Michael Dell claims that the move will help simplify the company's capital structure.

Nutanix has been an OEM partner of Dell EMC since 2014, and has been running its software on Dell's XC storage series since.

Pandey said Dell's relisting will bring more transparency to the performance of its consumption-based models and other new lines of business for the vendor.

"I do think that having a public company status brings more transparency to the business," he said.

It is absolutely [a good thing for Dell]. As Dell goes through a transformation with respect to product and architecture and the public cloud and their new consumption models in storage and servers, it requires a bellwether company such as Dell EMC to have transparency."

https://www.channelnomics.eu/channelnomics-eu/feature/3035704/nutanix-ceo-on-impressing-main-street-what-he-thinks-of-dells-ipo

ViON and Nutanix Showcase Hyperconverged Infrastructure-Based Solution Designed for GIS Operations at 2018 ESRI User Conference

HERNDON, Va.--( @BUSINESSWIRE)-- @ViON Corporation, a cloud service provider and market leader in the design, delivery and maintenance of mission-critical IT infrastructure solutions, announced today that it has partnered with @Nutanix to showcase a new hyperconverged infrastructure-based (HCI) solution using its Enterprise Cloud Platform and featuring NVIDIA GPUs at the 2018 ESRI user conference in San Diego July 9-13. This solution leverages data locality, web-scale, hyperconverged architecture, and powerful GPU technology to support performance and end-user experience demands while ensuring availability and easy scaling to effectively run GIS software, and, through ViON’s as-a-Service model, it’s now more cost-effective to acquire. This partnership enables GIS users to efficiently manage image files and make the most of their GIS mapping technology without burdening their budget.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180710005821/en/ViON-Nutanix-Showcase-Hyperconverged-Infrastructure-Based-Solution-Designed

How software-defined networking layers work with HCI

The networking component has often been overlooked, because early hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) systems failed to deliver software-defined networking (SDN) in a meaningful way. This has been steadily changing, as #SDN technologies have improved and become better adapted to HCI scenarios. For example, @BigCloud Fabric (BCF), an SDN system offered by @Big Switch Networks, can now be used in HCI services from @Nutanix, @VMware, @Dell EMC and @Red Hat. Other SDN products, including @VMwareNSX and @Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure, are moving just as aggressively into HCI territory. An SDN product such as BCF can use commodity switches from Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and other vendors, while providing a centralized control interface that supports automation and programmability. This allows it to route traffic in a way that best utilizes resources, while accommodating changing workloads. Like HCI in general, SDN takes a software-centric approach to networking that can be fully integrated into the HCI environment. A typical system is divided into three software-defined networking layers: a data plane that physically moves the network packets from node to node; a control plane that abstracts the physical resources in the data plane; and an application plane that controls network behavior via the control plane. Software-defined networking separates the control, data and application planes, making SDN easy to integrate with HCI. The SDN data plane The data plane, also known as the forwarding plane, is made up of physical devices, such as switches and routers. The devices forward the network packets from one node to the next along the defined data path. Unlike a traditional network infrastructure, the SDN does not rely on the control mechanisms built into a device's firmware, but instead uses the control plane to manage how traffic flows through each device. The software-defined networking layers of data plane, control plane and application plane work together to deliver an SDN platform that can be integrated into an HCI system, along with other software-defined components. SDN's inherent programmability makes it possible to automate networking operations and support fluctuating workloads, while providing the flexibility necessary to scale components and support different HCI configurations. The SDN control plane Like HCI in general, SDN takes a software-centric approach to networking that can be fully integrated into the HCI environment. The first of the software-defined networking layers, the control plane, abstracts the physical network and specifies how packets should flow through the data plane. The control plane is completely decoupled, or disaggregated, from the data plane, providing a logical, independent interface to the physical resources.

https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/tip/How-software-defined-networking-layers-work-with-HCI

Why Shares of Nutanix, Inc. Jumped 35% in March

@MonStock in enterprise cloud computing service provider @Nutanix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTNX) jumped 34.7% in March, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. So what As I described in a previous article on Nutanix's February performance, the company's fiscal 2018 second-quarter results (three months ended Jan. 31, 2018), released on March 1, propelled its shares on their steep trajectory. To recap, the organization booked robust double-digit increases in both revenue and billings. Nutanix's top line jumped 44% in comparison to the prior-year quarter, to $286.7 million, while billings rose 57% to $227.4 million. The company's diluted net loss per share decreased on a year-over-year basis. Nutanix lost $0.39 per share, versus $0.54 in the first quarter of 2017. Free cash flow (an important measure to watch in fast-growing software companies which post losses) improved to $32.4 million, versus $7.1 million a year earlier. Nutanix also impressed on several key customer metrics. Cumulative end customers reached 8,870 during the quarter, representing an expansion of nearly 65% against the prior year. And the organization's yield on its most important customers appears to be ramping up. Since the beginning of the fiscal year, Nutanix's cumulative customers with lifetime spends exceeding $1 million has jumped by one-third, to 541. Another way to interpret this statistic is that roughly 6% of Nutanix's customer base are significant lifetime purchasers, speaking to the quality and future potential of the company's revenue base. In other news during the month, Nutanix announced the acquisitions of Minjar, Inc., which provides visibility into customer workloads running in public clouds, and Netsil Inc., which provides application discovery and operations management in distributed cloud environments. The company did not disclose financial details for either transaction, so shareholders will likely have to wait until next quarter's earnings report for the size of the deals.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/04/05/why-shares-of-nutanix-inc-jumped-35-in-march.aspx

Dell EMC, VMware Top HCI Hardware, Software Revenue Rankings

@Sdxcentral @DellEMC and @VMware are the top-selling hyperconverged infrastructure ( #HCI) vendors by revenue, according to @IDC figures for fourth quarter 2017. Both companies are @DellTechnologies’ brands. Dell Technologies owns about 80 percent of VMware, which it acquired from the Dell-EMC merger in 2016. After a very public spat between Dell EMC and @Nutanix over IDC’s earlier rankings based only on companies’ branded hardware products — Dell EMC sells these systems running Nutanix and VMware HCI software, so Dell EMC got all the credit because its name is on the box — IDC’s latest quarterly tracker ranks technology providers two ways. It ranks vendors by the brand of the hyperconverged product and by the owner of the software providing the core #hyperconverged systems.

Read More:

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/dell-emc-and-vmware-top-hci-hardware-software-revenue-rankings/2018/04/

5 Issues I'd Like to See Addressed at Dell Technologies World

Although @DellTechnologies World will not be the biggest IT event of 2018, it will have one of the biggest impacts due to its scope. All the key components of the newly formed Dell Technologies -- @DellEMC, @Pivotal, @RSA, @SecureWorks, @Virtustream and @VMware -- will gather this year to show off their wares and discuss their technologies in Las Vegas April 30-May 3 at the Venetian Hotel. As Dell now has a complete stack for the on-premises datacenter, this event should have a little something for everyone. While there's a lot to look forward to, here are five issues that I'd like to see addressed at Dell Technologies World this year. TAKE 1 Cloud.In my introduction I stated that "Dell now has a complete stack for the on-premises datacenter," and the key word here is "on-premises." What Dell is missing is its own public cloud. Yes, Dell Technologies has set up excellent relationships with @AMS, @Google, @Azure and other public cloud providers, but relationships do not have the same impact as running a service or providing a product yourself and I'd like this conference to address this issue

TAKE 2
VMware.This year has been crazy for VMware, and a few rumors have surfaced surrounding potential future shifts in the relationship between Dell and VMware, including that Dell will allow itself to be acquired by VMware and return to public ownership, Dell will buy back the stock of VMware that it does not already own, or Dell will slowly sell off the VMware stock that it has. I'm hoping that these rumors, among others, will finally be put to rest at this event and give Dell customers an official glimpse of what is to become of VMware.

TAKE 3
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI).The HCI market was the fastest-growing on-premises sector in the datacenter last year. Reports show that HCI last year increased 68 percent and generated more than $1 billion in revenue, and Dell was able to garner the No. 1 spot within HCI sales last year. Dell needs to maintain its lead in this category, and I expect that it will make announcements on how the company's HCI portfolio will expand to incorporate its other storage technologies in this fast-growing market.

TAKE 4
Frenemies.Although Dell has a complete stack of software and hardware, it also has a huge ecosystem that provides services for the niches that it does not service. I fully expect that Dell will make announcements at this event that will alienate some of its long-standing ecosystem partners by announcing either competitive products or features in existing products that will compete with some of its ecosystem's providers.

TAKE 5
The Future.I believe that most attendees come to events such as this one to get a glimpse of the future of IT and to use that information to spot trends and gear of which their company and/or careers can take advantage. As Dell is a huge player in the IT field it can, and has, set the direction of IT. At this event, I would like to see Dell set a clear direction for what the datacenter will look like in the next five years, and most important, what technology it will be supplying to enable that vision.

https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2018/04/02/5-issues-addressed-at-dell-technologies-world.aspx?m=1

Hyperconvergence: What it is, how it works, and why it matters

#Hyperconvergence is a marketing term referring to a style of #datacenter architecture that trains the attention of IT operators and administrators on the operating conditions of workloads over systems. The main objective of #hyperconverged infrastructure ( #HCI ) has been to simplify the management of data centers by recasting them as transportation systems for software and transactions, rather than networks of processors with storage devices and memory caches dangling from them. The "convergence" that HCI makes feasible in the data center comes from the following: Applications and the servers that host them are managed together, using a single platform that focuses on the health and accessibility of those applications. Compute capacity, file storage, memory, and network connectivity are collected together and managed individually like public utilities. Workloads are treated like customers whose needs must be satisfied, even if it takes the decommissioning and shutdown of hardware to accomplish it. Each workload is packaged within the same class of construct: Usually virtual machines (VM) designed to be hosted by hypervisors such as VMware's ESX and ESXi, Xen, KVM, and Microsoft's Hyper-V. These constructs enable HCI platforms to treat them as essentially equivalent software components, if with different operating requirements. SERVICES VS SERVERS Since the dawn of information technology, the key task of computer operators has been to monitor and maintain the health of their machines. At some point, the value of keeping software accessible and functional to users -- especially to customers -- exceeded the cost of extending the lifespan of hardware. The key variables in the cost/benefit analysis equation were flipped, as the functionality of services became more valuable than the reliability of servers. Although the ideal of hyperconverged infrastructure has always been the radical simplification of workload management in enterprise data centers, in every enterprise whose data centers predate the installation of HCI, the issue of integration has reared its ugly head. Ops managers have insisted that pre-existing workloads co-exist with hyperconverged workloads. On the opposite end of the scale, developers working with the newest containerized technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes have insisted that their distributed, VM-free workloads co-exist with hyperconverged. Read also: What is Docker and why is it so darn popular? WHAT'S THE VALUE PROPOSITION? So the "hyper" part of hyperconvergence typically gets tamped down somewhat. The lack of a single, emergent co-existence strategy for any permutation of HCI has given the major vendors in this space an opening -- not just to establish competitive advantage but to insert specialized hardware and proprietary services into the mix. Architects of open-source data center platforms such as OpenStack cite this response from vendors as the re-emergence of locked-in architectures, in making their case for hybrid cloud architectures as effective alternatives. The question for many organizations: Is there value in adopting an architecture whose very name suggests the incorporation of everything, when reality dictates it must only be adopted partway and integrated with the rest? Put another way, is there any good to be gained from embracing an ideal that started out as all-inclusive, but which in practice ends up being exclusive after all?

http://www.zdnet.com/article/what-hyperconvergence-is-how-it-works-and-why-it-matters/

Hyperconvergence: What it is, how it works, and why it matters

#Hyperconvergence is a marketing term referring to a style of data center architecture that trains the attention of IT operators and administrators on the operating conditions of workloads over systems. The main objective of #hyperconverged infrastructure ( #HCI ) has been to simplify the management of data centers by recasting them as transportation systems for software and transactions, rather than networks of processors with storage devices and memory caches dangling from them. The "convergence" that HCI makes feasible in the data center comes from the following: Applications and the servers that host them are managed together, using a single platform that focuses on the health and accessibility of those applications. Compute capacity, file storage, memory, and network connectivity are collected together and managed individually like public utilities. Workloads are treated like customers whose needs must be satisfied, even if it takes the decommissioning and shutdown of hardware to accomplish it. Each workload is packaged within the same class of construct: Usually virtual machines (VM) designed to be hosted by hypervisors such as VMware's ESX and ESXi, Xen, KVM, and Microsoft's Hyper-V. These constructs enable HCI platforms to treat them as essentially equivalent software components, if with different operating requirements. SERVICES VS SERVERS Since the dawn of information technology, the key task of computer operators has been to monitor and maintain the health of their machines. At some point, the value of keeping software accessible and functional to users -- especially to customers -- exceeded the cost of extending the lifespan of hardware. The key variables in the cost/benefit analysis equation were flipped, as the functionality of services became more valuable than the reliability of servers.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/what-hyperconvergence-is-how-it-works-and-why-it-matters/

The hyper-converged network becoming more common in HCI

It is commonly said of hyper-converged infrastructure systems that they virtualize storage, compute and networking resources. That last one, networking, is not the same as the other two in an HCI implementation. In an HCI system, it is easy to take physical compute and storage resources and turn them into logical pools of virtual resources to be delivered to the virtual machines (VMs) at the end-user level. In each of those two cases, you are virtualizing just a few things -- CPU cycles and RAM for compute or data memory space for storage. In contrast, trying to implement a hyper-converged network means virtualizing the physical switches and controllers and dividing up among the VMs the bandwidth, throughput, access and other features they provide. Virtualizing how the end user accesses network resources, however, is not the same thing as making the resource itself virtual. Because the network is vital to all the other virtualized resources, it is arguably the most important aspect of an HCI system. If the network function doesn't operate properly, the VMs can experience everything from slowdowns to simply not being available to the end user. In other words, no network means no VMs to work on. One way a hyper-converged network is used by nearly all HCI platforms is by virtualizing the network interface card (NIC) in the VMs. This is also known as I/O virtualization, because it virtualizes the network input and output of the VM. Both @Microsoft's #HyperV hypervisor and VMware's ESX support this, and Microsoft added NIC teaming to Windows Server 2016, allowing virtual NICs to be combined into a pooled virtual network adapter to reduce connectivity and throughput issues for any one VM. Virtualizing how the end user accesses network resources, however, is not the same thing as making the resource itself virtual. Virtualizing networks To be truly on the same level as the compute and storage resources in a hyper-converged platform, your hyper-converged network would need to take the function of the physical switches and controllers. It would have to turn them into a logic pool from which any set amount could be assigned to each VM. That would require much of the network hardware to be contained in the HCI appliance or replicated via software in the appliance. VMware is one of the vendors with the most fully formed hyper-converged network technology, via its NSX product. While NSX was originally developed to work solely in a VMware HCI system, last year, the company released NSX-T, which can bring network virtualization to operations running the Kernel-based Virtual Machine hypervisor or ones based on OpenStack. Nutanix is working on adding networking to its HCI platform through its Acropolis infrastructure stack. These networking features include microsegmentation services and orchestration through open APIs. Software-defined networking and HCI Software-defined networking (SDN) is exactly as stated: running software that virtualizes management of typical network hardware, such as switches, firewalls and routers. SDN is often based on the OpenFlow protocol, although other protocols, such as OpenDaylight and even OpenStack, can be used. One of the advantages of SDN is that it allows a network admin to manage the flow of data through a network from a central control console, instead of having to adjust the individual hardware components separately.

http://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/feature/The-hyper-converged-network-becoming-more-common-in-HCI

Pivot3 Jumps Into Hybrid Cloud Game, Moves HCI Stack to AWS

Offering (or at least talking about) a #hybridcloud service has become almost a requirement for hyperconverged infrastructure ( #HCI) software vendors. And now @Pivot3 has joined the party with its Cloud Edition on @Amazon Web Services (AWS). The platform allows customers to run the same HCI stack in AWS and in on-premises data centers. “A lot of the features customers like in our hyperconverged software platform running in on-premises environments around policy automation and workload prioritization, they can now take advantage of that in a cloud environment,” said Ben Bolles, VP of products at Pivot3.

Support for @Microsoft #Azure and @Google Cloud will come later this year, he said.

The primary uses cases with this edition, which will be generally available in the second half of this year, include backup and disaster recovery. Using AWS eliminates the need to stand up a second data center or co-location facility.

Intelligent Cloud Engine

The new platform also uses something that Pivot3 calls its Intelligent Cloud Engine. It builds on the company’s policy-based quality of service (QoS) engine, which automates data placement and data protection tasks based on service level agreements and business priorities.

“The Intelligent Cloud Engine essentially is putting a name on all the capabilities we have for our policy-based management, and all the work we do around data protection and data management,” Bolles said.

The company plans to add an archive use case.

“We’ll have policies built around that so that our software will automatically figure out what data should reside on premises and what data should go up to the cloud,” Bolles said. “Being able to automate workloads’ movements based on the policies customers set within our software — that would be a main difference compared to VMware or others that might run on AWS or Azure.”

HCI Stacks for Hybrid Cloud

Most leading HCI software vendors already have a hybrid cloud play. VMware Cloud on AWS launched about six months ago. Microsoft Azure Stack, which lets enterprises build a private-cloud version of the Azure public cloud in their own data centers, began shipping last September.

And Nutanix has been talking about its Xi public cloud service since last summer (even though it’s not slated to launch until later this year).

Is Pivot3 too late to the hybrid cloud game?

“It is definitely not too late for Pivot3,” said Mike Leone, a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “The Pivot3 hybrid cloud approach is slightly different and more intelligent that many of its competitors.”

The difference, he said, is the company’s policy-based management, which can be used to optimize resource utilization. “And with resource utilization being the key cost component in the cloud, the more intelligent that resource utilization can be managed the better,” Leone said.

Smarter Hybrid Cloud?

Eric Slack, a senior analyst at Evaluator Group, agreed.

“Pivot3’s taking the right approach, and that’s what important in the long term,” Slack said. “VMware has a pretty good story. Nutanix has a head start on a lot of folks, too. But in terms of what Pivot3 is doing, they’ve been talking about automated policy management and their quality of service engine for three years. They are using that same intelligence, that same decision making [in the new hybrid cloud platform] so that cloud just becomes one more destination to put stuff.”

Slack said Pivot3’s technology is sound, and its policy engine differentiates it from other HCI software stacks.

“I don’t think they’ve gotten as much traction in the market on their quality of service engine,” Slack said. “But one of the things about that kind of technology: it lends itself to analytics. And that’s the kind of thing people are looking for in a cloud infrastructure.”

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/pivot3-jumps-into-hybrid-cloud-game-moves-hci-stack-to-aws/2018/03/

Spice Money Transforms Digital Payments for Millions of Users with Nutanix

Spice Money Transforms Digital Payments for Millions of Users with Nutanix Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS Software and AHV Help Deliver Faster and More Secure Money Transfers March 20, 2018 12:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time MUMBAI, India--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in enterprise cloud computing, today announced the deployment of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software at Spice Money, a digital wallet subsidiary of Spice Digital Limited. Spice Money chose Nutanix to help with scaling transactions, streamlining their data center management and reducing costs to deploy their services. “Legacy IT infrastructure is inflexible, vulnerable to outages and ill-suited to the heavy demands of digital and mobile banking. Three-tier infrastructure doesn’t scale and is expensive, making it impractical for a fintech conglomerate such as ourselves” Tweet this Spice Money is used mainly for money transfers within India, and processes over 4 million transactions for more than 2 million customers every month. To date, Spice Money has achieved a Gross Transaction Value (GTV) of $1 billion USD. Keeping up with its exponential growth while retaining innovation, high performance and reliability of the service are critical objectives for Spice Money. Digitization and digital payments are key areas of growth across India and customers are increasingly demanding faster and more secure services. Data protection and compliance were also important considerations in their selection of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud solution. As a result of their Nutanix deployment, the company has been able to achieve higher productivity with significantly lower total cost of ownership (TCO). To date, Spice Money has experienced an almost 50% reduction in its overall infrastructure costs and an approximately 40% improvement in its transaction processing speed. Nutanix has also helped streamline Spice Money’s performance monitoring process using Nutanix Prism, which allows one centralized control plane to manage Spice Money’s compute, storage, hypervisor, network visualization, backup and Disaster Recovery management resources. Spice Money also selected the Nutanix integrated hypervisor, AHV, to further reduce the cost of virtualization licenses, maintenance and support. The ease of provisioning resources with Nutanix also allows Spice Money to prepare for disaster recovery scenarios. With their newly modernized IT infrastructure, Spice Money is expecting more efficient use of existing resources, benefiting both the company and its millions of customers. "Legacy IT infrastructure is inflexible, vulnerable to outages and ill-suited to the heavy demands of digital and mobile banking. Three-tier infrastructure doesn’t scale and is expensive, making it impractical for a fintech conglomerate such as ourselves," said Mr. Saket Agarwal, Global CEO of Spice Money. "With our hyperconverged solution from Nutanix, we have dramatically reduced network latency and increased network capacity. Nutanix also allows us to easily perform infrastructure re-provisioning, ensuring quick recovery in the event of a disaster or server outage." "Our software-centric approach enables companies like Spice Money to reduce the cost and time spent on building and running their infrastructure, so they can focus on delivering true business value to customers," said Sunil Mahale, Vice President of Nutanix India. "We are pleased that the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software has helped ensure a delightful user experience for Spice Money customers. We are confident that by using Nutanix, Spice Money can continue to see the value-added benefits of the modernized data center."

http://www.itpro.co.uk/server-storage/30799/dell-emc-poweredge-r6415-review-an-epyc-win-for-amd

Pivot3, VMware Edge HCI Pushes Hyperconverged to Remote Offices

Reduced complexity and smaller #datacenter footprints are a couple of the benefits of #hyperconverged infrastructure ( #HCI). So it makes sense that systems, which combine core storage and compute functionality into a single, highly virtualized platform, would play well in remote and branch offices ( #ROBO ) and network-edge locations. This week @Pivot3 launched a hyperconverged infrastructure product specifically designed for ROBO and edge computing. @VMware at last month’s Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona announced its own edge HCI product. And don’t forget @Riverbed #SteelFusion, said @Mike Leone, a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “For some reason it doesn’t land on many HCI lists, but it should,” he wrote in an email. “They integrate their WAN optimization technology into their HCI solution, meaning organizations can consolidate yet another component at the edge. And with the network being so important at the edge, that’s a big differentiator for them.” HCI can reduce capex and simplify both hardware and software management at remote offices, said IDC analyst Eric Sheppard. “HCI is designed to be up and running quickly,” Sheppard said. “You’re coalescing all of the storage elements down to a cluster of software-defined, industry-standard servers. So rather than having an edge environment where you have disparate hardware that needs to be managed, you end up with a highly virtualized and software-defined solution where all of the management is super simplified through automation or centralized management.”

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/pivot3-vmware-edge-hci/2018/03/

Dell EMC VP Envisions IaaS, PaaS And Container Services Running On VMware Cloud Foundation

@DellEMC 's #softwaredefined data center road map revolves around providing services on @VMware 's Cloud Foundation platform. "We envision infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, container as a service, running on VMware Cloud Foundation, running on #VxRack, which is built using our #hyperconverged infrastructure appliance, #VxRail," said @ChadDunn, vice president of product management and marketing at Dell EMC, in an interview with CRN. Dunn, an 11-year Dell EMC veteran, is the product leader for Dell EMC's hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) products, responsible for strategy and the technology road map. He said many Dell customers are in different maturity stages in rolling out a software-defined data center (SDDC) strategy. [Related: Dell CFO Sweet: Positive Impact Of Tax Reform Should Offset Any Negatives In The Long Term] "Some are starting on hyper-converged appliances, building out large environments with the intent to move to a VxRack or a Cloud Foundation infrastructure later on. Then we have others that are starting right out of the gate with VxRack SDDC, which includes the Cloud Foundation software – vSAN, vSphere -- and all the components to sort of orchestrate that environment as a system," said Dunn. "That's really what our strategy is about -- how do we make infrastructures like that turnkey and very easy for our customers to get to value quickly on." The company has a turnkey HCI appliance, VxRail, as well as a rack-scale software-defined solution, VxRack SDDC – both of which are co-engineered with VMware. VMware Cloud Foundation is VMware's unified SDDC platform that brings together VMware vSphere, vSAN, and its software-defined networking product, NSX, into a natively integrated stack to deliver cloud infrastructure. [Sponsored Suggested Post: The C-Level Newsletter - Executive Voices. Exclusive Insights. News, interviews & perspectives on executives shaping the IT channel. Subscribe Today VxRail is Dell EMC's fastest-growing product with 75 percent of sales being fulfilled by channel partners, according to Dunn. He said the company is enabling partners to sell the HCI offering through certifications and its VxRail Xpert program, which is an exam-based curriculum. "Once you're in [Xpert], you get early access to a lot of insight information on VxRail, what our product road maps are, what our performance characteristics are so that you have a deeper level of understanding of the technology," said Dunn. "You can more easily offer it to your clients." Dell EMC was named a Leader in Gartner's first-ever Magic Quadrant for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure this year, ranked No. 2 in execution and No.3 in vision on the quadrant. VMware, which Dell Technologies owns an 82 percent stake in, ranked No. 2 in vision and No. 3 in execution on the quadrant.

https://www.crn.com/news/data-center/300100691/dell-emc-vp-envisions-iaas-paas-and-container-services-running-on-vmware-cloud-foundation.htm

Forrester Research, Google, and Cohesity Discuss How to Leverage the Cloud for Today’s Data Protection and Storage ChallengesLive Webcast Will Discuss How Enterprises Can Use Google Cloud

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 14, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- @Cohesity, the leader of #hyperconverged secondary storage, will host a webcast featuring speakers from @Google Cloud and @ForresterResearch discussing the benefits of #GoogleCloud to enhance data protection and storage strategies today at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET. The interactive presentation addresses the problems facing enterprises as they struggle to keep up with exponential data growth and corresponding data protection and storage needs. Participants will hear how organizations can leverage the public cloud while maintaining consistent infrastructure and operation models with their on-premises data center. Hybrid clouds are the predominant strategy for most enterprises as they look to increase agility and gain the advantage of cloud economics using compute and storage. In this webcast, participants will learn about hybrid cloud trends, how to build an enterprise cloud data fabric for all secondary workloads, and will hear how Cohesity and Google customers are benefiting from the joint solution for backup, archival, and disaster recovery in the cloud. To join the webinar, please register here.

http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/forrester-research-google-and-cohesity-discuss-how-to-leverage-the-cloud-for-today-s-data-protection-and-storage-challengeslive-webcast-will-discuss-how-enterprises-can-use-google-cloud-and-1018695983

5 Things Partners Need To Know About Nutanix's Acquisition Of Netsil And Its M&A Strategy

@Nutanix's M&A Strategy #Hyperconverged infrastructure pioneer Nutanix is transforming its technology and go-to-market strategy in 2018 as it shifts to becoming a software-only hyper-converged infrastructure vendor. The San Jose, Calif.-based company Monday unveiled its second acquisition in less than two weeks, signing a definitive agreement to buy application discovery and operations management startup @Netsil.  @Nutanix is also doubling down on its channel strategy by rolling out new software rebates and incentives for partners along with a new hyper-converged infrastructure product line alongside @DellTechnologies, the XC Core. With Nutanix software sales recently hitting the $1 billion annual run rate mark, here are five things partners need to know about Nutanix's plans for Netsil and what types of acquisition the company sees on the horizon.
https://www.crn.com/slide-shows/virtualization/300100591/5-things-partners-need-to-know-about-nutanixs-acquisition-of-netsil-and-its-ma-strategy.htm

Nutanix, Inc. (Nasdaq: NTNX) to Ring The Nasdaq Stock Market Opening Bell

ADVISORY, March 09, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- What: @Nutanix, Inc. (Nasdaq:NTNX), a leader in enterprise cloud computing, will visit the @Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square. In honor of the occasion, @Dheeraj Pandey, Co-Founder, CEO and Chairman, will ring the Opening Bell. Where: Nasdaq MarketSite – 4 Times Square – 43rd & Broadway – Broadcast Studio When: Monday, March 12, 2018 – 9:15 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. ET Nutanix Media Contact: Jennifer Massaro 408.309.6886 jennifer.massaro@nutanix.com Nasdaq MarketSite Media Contact: Emily Pan (646) 441-5120 emily.pan@nasdaq.com Feed Information: Fiber Line (Encompass Waterfront): 4463 Gal 3C/06C 95.05 degrees West 18 mhz Lower DL 3811 Vertical FEC 3/4 SR 13.235 DR 18.295411 MOD 4:2:0 DVBS QPSK Social Media: For multimedia features such as exclusive content, photo postings, status updates and video of bell ceremonies, please visit our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/NASDAQ. For photos from ceremonies and events, please visit our Instagram page: http://instagram.com/nasdaq For livestream of ceremonies and events, please visit our YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/nasdaq/live For news tweets, please visit our Twitter page: http://twitter.com/nasdaq For exciting viral content and ceremony photos, please visit our Tumblr page: http://nasdaq.tumblr.com/ Webcast: A live stream of the Nasdaq Opening Bell will be available at: https://new.livestream.com/nasdaq/live or http://www.nasdaq.com/about/marketsitetowervideo.asx Photos: To obtain a hi-resolution photograph of the Market Open, please go to http://business.nasdaq.com/discover/market-bell-ceremonies and click on the market open of your choice. About Nutanix Nutanix is a global leader in cloud software and hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, making infrastructure invisible so that IT can focus on the applications and services that power their business. Companies around the world use Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software to bring one-click application management and mobility across public, private and distributed edge clouds so they can run any application at any scale with a dramatically lower total cost of ownership. The result is organizations that can rapidly deliver a high-performance IT environment on demand, giving application owners a true cloud-like experience. Learn more at www.nutanix.com or follow us on Twitter @nutanix. About Nasdaq Nasdaq (Nasdaq:NDAQ) is a leading global provider of trading, clearing, exchange technology, listing, information and public company services. Through its diverse portfolio of solutions, Nasdaq enables customers to plan, optimize and execute their business vision with confidence, using proven technologies that provide transparency and insight for navigating today's global capital markets. As the creator of the world's first electronic stock market, its technology powers more than 90 marketplaces in 50 countries, and 1 in 10 of the world's securities transactions. Nasdaq is home to approximately 3,900 total listings with a market value of approximately $13 trillion. To learn more, visit: http://business.nasdaq.com

https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/03/09/1419962/0/en/Nutanix-Inc-Nasdaq-NTNX-to-Ring-The-Nasdaq-Stock-Market-Opening-Bell.html

Google's 72-Qubit Bristlecone Puts 'Quantum Supremacy' Within Reach

Today’s topics include @Google previewing the largest quantum computing processor to date; the #DDoS record broken again as a memcached attack hits 1.7 Tbps; @Microsoft revamping the setup experience for Windows 10; and hyperconverged infrastructure systems as one of the hottest IT markets of 2018. Google this week previewed Bristlecone, a 72-qubit quantum processor that surpasses the previous record 50-qubit system @IBM announced last November. Google's announcement, at the American Physical Society meeting March 5 in Los Angeles, takes the company one step closer to its goal of demonstrating "quantum supremacy," where a quantum computer can perform a task that a classical computer cannot. Google thinks quantum supremacy can be easily demonstrated with a 49-qubit processor so long as certain other technical conditions are also achieved.

Julian Kelly, research scientist at Google's Quantum AI Lab, said, "We believe the experimental demonstration of a quantum processor outperforming a supercomputer would be a watershed moment for our field. [It] remains one of our key objectives.”

Related ReadingGoogle Previews 72-Qubit Quantum ProcessorMemcached DDoS Attack Hits 1.7 TbpsMicrosoft Adds More Privacy Controls to Windows 10HCI Storage: One Hot Market in 2018

Netscout Arbor on March 5 reported the largest ever distributed denial-of-service attack to date at 1.7 terabits per second, just four days after the previous largest DDoS attack at 1.35 Tbps against GitHub was reported. Both attacks involved improperly configured memcached servers that reflected attack traffic, amplifying the total volume.

At this point in time, it's not clear who is behind the memcached DDoS attacks, though indicators show where the traffic is coming from.

Carlos Morales, vice president of Arbor's Security Engineering and Response Team, noted, "The top source country was the United States at nearly 50 percent of the traffic at peak. The other sources in the top 5 included France, Netherlands, UK and Australia."

Microsoft on March 6 released Windows 10 test build 17115 for PC members of the Windows Insider early-access program. The new build features a revamped set of controls that greet users when they first run the operating system. Included is a new setup experience offering users control over how their data is shared with the company.

Marisa Rogers, Windows and Devices Group Privacy Officer at Microsoft, said, "This new design conveys focused information to help our customers make focused choices about their privacy and offers two new settings for Inking & Typing and Find my device.”

Those new settings may show up in a single-screen layout or as separate screens for some users so that the company's developers can gauge which approach is most effective. On separate screens, Microsoft will highlight its privacy recommendation by framing it with a dotted line. Some users may be presented with up to seven individual screens.

Hyperconverged infrastructure systems are all the rage, with @HP, @DellEMC, @Cisco Systems, @Lenovo, @Nutanix, @Pivot3, @Cohesity, @HyperGrid, @Maxta and others all crowding the space. " #Hyperconverged " refers to platform offerings that share computing and storage resources, based on #softwaredefined storage, software-defined computing, commodity hardware and a unified management interface.

Hyperconverged systems deliver their main value through software tools, commoditizing the underlying hardware. The market surpassed $2.2 billion in global revenue in 2016, up 110 percent compared to 2015, and was at $2.9 billion after three quarters in 2017.

Pivot3 CEO Ron Nash said, "Hyperconverged is in a 'crossing-the-chasm' situation right now. ... Once [everybody] bought the hyperconverged system for one purpose, they started to run other things on it. They saw that it stayed up, did not lose data, was easy to operate and was less expensive than buying traditional legacy gear.”

http://www.eweek.com/servers/google-s-72-qubit-bristlecone-puts-quantum-supremacy-within-reach

Nutanix stock gains after BTIG upgrades to buy

Shares of @Nutanix Inc. #NTNX, +5.99% are up 3% in premarket trading Friday after a pair of analysts grew more positive on the stock. BTIG's @EdwardParker upgraded shares to buy from hold Friday, pointing to how the company has transcended "traditional infrastructure categories." The company is now the leader of the "fledgling 'enterprise cloud OS'" market, he noted. Parker admitted that he missed a big run up for the stock, which has more than tripled in price since May, but he thinks the company can make a "further ascension up the IT stack." He has a $53 target on shares. Separately, KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Alex Kurtz raised his price target on the stock to $52 from $44, citing several new projects in the EU. Shares of Nutanix are up 116% over the past 12 months, while the S&P 500 SPX, +1.74% has gained 16%.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nutanix-stock-gains-after-btig-upgrades-to-buy-2018-03-09

Nutanix Buying Minjar To Boost Multi-Cloud Capabilities

The #hyperconverged infrastructure ( #HCI ) pioneer @Nutanix unveiled plans on Thursday to acquire @Minjar, a company providing a platform with centralized cost control and visibility into #publiccloud workloads. "We are looking forward to offering our customers the full breadth of Minjar's multi-cloud capabilities while deeply integrating them into our Enterprise Cloud OS," said @SunilPotti, Chief Product and Development Officer at Nutanix, in a statement.  "Minjar is a pioneer that provides tangible benefits to enterprise customers on their multi-cloud journey … The experience and insights garnered from multiple cloud-native deployments have enabled Minjar to build a robust offering in Botmetric," Potti said. "Minjar's customer focus and philosophy of one-click simplicity is extremely well aligned with our own." Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

https://www.crn.com/news/data-center/300100081/nutanix-buying-minjar-to-boost-multi-cloud-capabilities.htm