The 10 Top Hyper-Converged Platforms Of 2018 (So Far)

Hyper-Converged Boom Sales from hyper-converged systems hit $1.3 billion in the first quarter 2018, skyrocketing 76 percent year over year as businesses around the globe are increasing investment in data center technologies that eliminate silos and boost business-centric decisions. Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) combines storage, computing, networking and software into a single system aimed at reducing complexity and boosting scalability. Research firm Gartner predicts that by 2020, 20 percent of business-critical applications currently deployed on three-tier IT infrastructure will transition to HCI.  The largest IT vendors in the world have been focusing R&D efforts in recent years on creating hyper-converged solutions as many customers steer towards a hybrid cloud approach. Here are the ten coolest hyper-converged products tearing through the market in 2018. (For more on the biggest news of 2018, check out "CRN's Tech Midyear In Review.").

Cisco HyperFlex

The San Jose, Calif.-based networking giant leverages its Unified Computing System (UCS) as the platform for its flagship HyperFlex hyper-converged infrastructure appliance. HyperFlex, launched in 2016, integrates UCS, UCS Manager, and data and storage management software. This year, Cisco rolled out significant updatesto the platform to position the solution for hybrid cloud, tighten integration with software solutions, and add support for containers. One key addition was support for Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor. According to first quarter 2018 market data from IDC, Cisco owns 4.9 percent share of the hyper-converged systems market, generating $60 million in sales for the quarter, up 145 percent year over year.

Dell EMC VxRack SDDC
HCI market share leader Dell EMC has a large product line of hyper-converged solutions, although its VxRack SDDC infrastructure offering is one of the most powerful. The rack-scale software-defined solution is integrated with physical and virtual networking delivered through Cisco switches and VMware NSX software, along with vSphere, vSAN and SDDC Manager. The solution is optimized for predictable performance, scalability and delivering a simple path to hybrid cloud with an automated elastic cloud infrastructure.  Customers can also easily create a foundation for a complete VMware private cloud with VxRack SDDC. Dell EMC took home hyper-converged market share gold in the first quarter 2018, capturing nearly 30 percent share with sales topping $363 million, up 142 percent year over year.

Dell EMC XC Core
Dell's platform is part of the popular Dell Technologies and Nutanix XC Series of hyper-converged solutions. The XC Core uses the same Dell EMC hardware and software as the XC Series appliances, but the software is licensed and support directly by Nutanix. The new solution, based on Dell PowerEdge servers, lets customers buy Nutanix software licenses from channel partners and then add the licenses to pre-validated XC Core systems that are configured, built and tested by Dell. The XC Series have been deployed by thousands of customers in almost every major vertical thanks to its ability to tailor processors, memory and storage configurations to meet specific use cases.

HPE SimpliVity

Hewlett Packard Enterprise's primary hyper-converged offering HPE SimpliVity drives around 80 percent of the company's total HCI revenue.  HPE SimpliVity, managed by VMware vCenter, is based on a software-defined scale-out storage architecture that can scale from a single node to eight clustered nodes plus an additional 16 network-only nodes. It features always-on in-line compression and deduplication data services leveraging the HPE OmniStack Accelerator Card to provide consistent performance for virtualized production workloads. In June, the Palo Alto Calif.-based company said it plans to bring its InfoSight predictive analytics software to SimpliVity by the end of 2018. HPE captured 5 percent of the hyper-converged market in first quarter 2018 reaching $61 million in sales, up 112 percent year over year.

Maxta Hyperconvergence Software

Maxta's hyperconvergence software supports every major server brand -- including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell EMC and Cisco -- as well as multiple hypervisors and containers.  The Santa Clara, Calif.-based vendor's application-centric platform allows customers to choose software only or have the software pre-installed on existing server platforms with the ability to scale storage and compute independently. With application-defined performance policies, customers can easily consolidate different applications on the same cluster while improving performance. recently joined forces with distributor Arrow Electronics to offer hyper-converged bundled, pre-configured systems on servers from Intel, Dell, Lenovo and Supermicro.

https://www.crn.com/slide-shows/data-center/300106721/the-10-top-hyper-converged-platforms-of-2018-so-far.htm

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/

Are You Ready for Extreme Scale?

Just as server virtualization and automation was the key to the IaaS market, software-defined storage on the right hardware is what takes storage to hyper-scale

Storage at cloud scale isn’t just about dealing with the ever-growing amount of data produced; it’s about meeting performance, availability and resiliency needs for a wide range of audiences and workloads at competitive cost, with demanding SLAs. Cloud storage providers, hosters and large enterprises consolidating into mega-scale data centers all need storage systems designed to deliver both performance-focused and capacity-focused storage efficiently and flexibly, with low management overhead and in a way that scales up and down efficiently with demand.

Fast or far away

Traditional storage architectures centralize I/O but monolithic storage arrays can’t match the performance of directly-attached disks; the disk controllers and storage network interfaces throttle I/O throughput. A transactional database can run out of CPU capacity on a server with a large number of cores long before it hits the I/O limits of SSD, but a storage array could be a bottleneck that means the application slows down before it saturates the CPU.

But putting SSDs and, especially, expensive PCIe flash in servers can lead to poor resource utilization because that performance and capacity is only available to applications on the specific server. Juggling demanding applications onto specific hardware for storage performance loses all the benefits of virtualization.

Not only do SANs and virtual storage appliances not scale IOPS as well, they can also be less flexible to scale and reconfigure, especially with a separate storage network (and the data center infrastructure required for that). For extreme storage scale, you need to be able to grow storage in a modular, cost-effective way that offers storage elasticity and fast configuration. It’s far easier to scale capacity and performance with a distributed storage system.

In converged and hyper-converged storage systems, every node in the cluster serves I/O, which means that IOPS scales well as you add nodes to a cluster. Using a combination of SSDs, PCIe flash and low-cost, commodity hard disk drives and industry standard servers to create a SAN from local application server storage with software-defined block storage tools like ScaleIO that can provision and remove storage on the fly gives you massive scale, but also the flexibility to handle the changing priorities of different customers and workloads.

ScaleIO converts the direct-attached storage in servers into shared block storage that applications can treat like a SAN (via the ScaleIO Data Client device driver on each node) even though it’s abstracted, pooled and automated. Each node also runs the ScaleIO Data Server which makes the local storage part of the distributed virtual SAN.

Data volumes look unified to applications, but they’re split into chunks of data distributed across all the nodes in a cluster, and mirrored across all the disks in that cluster, making the storage both highly available and very high performance.

Scaling performance and reliability

Because every server and local storage device in a cluster is used in parallel to both protect data and process IO, the read and write bandwidth both scale close to linearly as new servers and storage are added.

Clusters don’t have to be made up of uniform nodes; they can have different compute and storage resources, and you don’t have to scale compute and storage together. You can upgrade capacity or add faster storage to existing servers or add more servers independently. ScaleIO starts at 3 modes but can go up to 1,000.

There’s no downtime as components are added or removed – or if they fail; data is automatically rebuilt and redistributed across storage devices and nodes. Distributing and mirroring the chunks of the volume across the nodes also speeds up rebuilding and rebalancing data because small pieces of data are coming from multiple nodes in parallel.

Extreme scale means running a wide variety of workloads that can come and go at any time, at competitive costs and meeting SLAs without overprovisioning. Scaling down can matter as much as scaling up. ScaleIO lets you set different performance tiers giving individual applications as much performance or capacity as they need- very much like allocating compute and memory resources to a virtual machine. Quality of Service guarantees storage performance, throttling back ‘noisy neighbors’ to support large-scale multi-tenant environments. Protection domains, storage pools and data encryption at rest keep data in multi-tenant environments segregated.

You can also set QoS for each volume, limiting the IOPS or bandwidth for each application or use volume migration to move lower priority data to lower cost data.

Hardware on demand

One big advantage of ScaleIO is that you can quickly deploy it alongside existing data center infrastructure. There are multiple configurations; a storage-only setup that creates an external storage system with server nodes or a hyperconverged option that runs on the same servers that host applications and storage. It works with a wide range of hypervisors and server operating systems, including vSphere, Windows Server, Hyper-V, Linux and OpenStack.

Hardware choices are also flexible − you can maximize your infrastructure investment by running it on existing server hardware, or you can buy pre-configured ScaleIO Ready Nodesfrom Dell EMC. These come set up in known good configurations to maximize uptime, while saving you time. That means as you grow your infrastructure for extreme scale, you can automate the physical scale out of storage and compute resources by ordering hardware that’s ready to plug in, tested and validated for reliability, and with a single vendor for support.

@ScaleIO Ready Nodes are based on @Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation servers with the latest @Intel Xeon processors. The higher core count, increased memory channels and faster memory speed up applications and data and better drive cooling improves reliability. The PowerEdge R640 is a 1U, two-socket platform but for maximum storage performance and sensity the 2U, two-socket R740XD supports up to 24 NVMe cards for an all-flash system. If you want to take advantage of the flexibility to mix and match node configurations, you can fit both 2.5” and 3.5” drives in the same chassis. Hard drives, fans and the redundant PSU are all hot-swappable to minimize downtime.

Extreme scale needs a combination of software and hardware, plus automation to get the maximum value out of your infrastructure, so you can deliver the low cost and high performance and service that businesses expect from cloud-scale storage. You need agility and flexibility, as well as scale to adapt to fast-moving business needs. Hyperconverged software-defined storage can give you performance, reliability and elastic scaling, but it’s also less demanding to manage with the skills you bring to managing the rest of the data centers, making storage just another service rather than a special and demanding snowflake

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/industry-perspectives/are-you-ready-extreme-scale

6 Things You Should Know About Acropolis Ultimate Edition

This blog post is authored by @Shubhika Taneja, Senior Product Marketing Manager @Nutanix offers three editions of #Acropolis software so that you can select the right capabilities that fit the needs of your #EnterpriseCloud. You can see the list of capabilities offered by the three editions of Acropolis: Basic, Pro and Ultimate here. In this blog post we discuss how you can quickly check which edition of Acropolis you have and how to get the most out of Acropolis Ultimate edition. First, Which Edition Of Acropolis Software Do You Have? Once you log into Prism Element for your cluster, and click on the far right admin drop down, you will see an option: "About Nutanix". Clicking on "About Nutanix" will show you the software and the license you have. Next, Are You Getting the Most Out of Acropolis Ultimate's Capabilities? The advanced capabilities that come included with the Ultimate edition enable you to leverage the full potential of Nutanix to build and operate your Enterprise Cloud. You can: 1. Consolidate VMs and Unstructured Data: Acropolis File Services (AFS), included in Acropolis Ultimate Edition, consolidates VMs and unstructured data on Nutanix, thus giving you a simpler infrastructure stack. AFS can be deployed on any Nutanix cluster in a few clicks from Prism. AFS supports SMB protocol and support for NFS is coming soon, has a rich partner ecosystem for capabilities such as Inline Antivirus Scans, Backups, File Auditing and Global Namespace. You can learn more about AFS here. 2. Ensure All-Flash Performance: VM Flash mode which is a part of the Acropolis Ultimate Edition ensures all-flash performance for latency-sensitive applications in a hybrid system. The data for these applications does not migrate from the SSD-backed hot data tier to the cold data tier that uses HDD. 3. Choose among several options for MultiSite DR: Nutanix multi-site disaster recovery option supports a wide variety of enterprise topologies to meet all customers' replication requirements such as one-to-many, many-to-one, many-to-many. One-to-many scenario covers the use case where you have a central site and multiple remote locations for central site backup where in case of disaster workloads can be started on either remote locations. Many-to-one scenario or a hub-and-spoke architecture are deployments where workloads are running on multiple different sites and are being replicated to the central site. At last you have the many-to-many scenario where workloads can be replicated to many sites and recovered from many sites. 4. Support NearSync Replication for Mission Critical Applications: NearSync (Near Synchronous) Replication allows for one minute RPO for mission-critical applications. There are no restrictions on latency or distance. By leveraging Nutanix Light Weight Snapshots (LWS), it supports more granular restore capabilities. NearSync is supported with vSphere and AHV. It enables an RTO of minutes and an RPO as low as one minute. 5. Guarantee zero data loss with Metro Availability and Synchronous Replication: Metro Availability synchronously replicates data to another site, ensuring that a full, real-time copy of the data exists at a different location. During a disaster, VMs can failover from a primary site to a secondary site, guaranteeing nearly 100 percent uptime for applications and zero data loss. For planned failovers, live-migration of the VMs between sites is supported. Metro Availability requires a max RTT latency of 5ms. This technology enables RTO of near zero and RPO of zero minutes. Metro is available for vSphere. For Hyper-V, Nutanix supports synchronous replication (Sync Rep) between two clusters, but does not provide any HA or live migration capabilities. 6. Protect Data with Software Based Data-at-Rest Encryption: Nutanix data-at-rest encryption meets FIPS 140-2 compliance for both software and hardware (SEDs) encryption solutions. The software based encryption does not rely on any specialized hardware. Nutanix data-at-rest encryption satisfies regulatory requirements for government agencies, banking, financial, and healthcare.

https://next.nutanix.com/blog-40/6-things-you-should-know-about-acropolis-ultimate-edition-27496

Enterprises Simplify and Save Resources by Consolidating Files and Object Storage on Cohesity DataPlatform

SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 14, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- @Cohesity, the leader of #hyperconverged #secondarystorage, today announced that customers are expanding the use of its scale-out platform to handle file and #objectstorage along with data protection on the same platform, achieving dramatically lower infrastructure costs and simpler data management. Cohesity DataPlatform's radically simple and efficient approach to data protection has gained popularity as enterprises grow out of legacy backup solutions that are costly and don’t scale. Now these companies are extending the value of their Cohesity deployment by using it to consolidate their unstructured data across the organization. A growing share of Cohesity customers, such as Manhattan Associates, which started with Cohesity backup capabilities, are now adding file and object storage to seamlessly read and write to the same data volume, eliminating unnecessary data copies and hardware siloes for maximum efficiency and simpler management. Both the volume and variety of enterprise data continues to grow exponentially. Along with the cost and complexity of traditional enterprise storage, it is putting enormous pressure on businesses to find a better way to manage their exploding data assets. Until recently, enterprise IT handled different use cases with separate storage solutions, each built with its own proprietary hardware, user interface, and licensing model, leading to fragmented data siloes that become operationally inefficient and complex to manage. Cohesity DataPlatform consolidates all secondary storage - that is, any workload that doesn’t require strict service level agreements (SLAs) - including file shares, backups and archiving, logs, media, test/dev and analytics. This enables companies to dramatically simplify their data center and save resources by bringing everything together on a single platform.

https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/02/14/1348140/0/en/Enterprises-Simplify-and-Save-Resources-by-Consolidating-Files-and-Object-Storage-on-Cohesity-DataPlatform.html

Datrium Announces Record Customer Adoption of Open Convergence

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jan. 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --  @Datrium, the leading provider of #OpenConverged Infrastructure for #hybrid #clouds, announced today that business growth is accelerating as a record number of customers adopt its new breed of convergence. Product innovation and strategic partnerships, together with a growing number of enterprises that have experienced firsthand the limitations of #hyperconverged infrastructure ( #HCI), were largely responsible for the accelerating customer interest and adoption experienced throughout 2017. Significant Customer Adoption Continues With more than 300 DVX deployments in seven quarters, Datrium customers now include large enterprises like global technology powerhouse Siemens, a global consumer products company, and one of the world's leading entertainment service companies, as well as popular consumer brands like Oberto and Osprey Packs. Adoption has been strong across all industry sectors including financial services, healthcare, public sector, and service providers. Revenue also grew many times that of 2016, and included petabyte-size deployments, multiple DR installations and repeat purchases from existing Datrium customers. "We considered all-flash arrays and hyperconverged systems, but nothing compared to Datrium, which gave us the best of both without the drawbacks," said Bryan Bond, Director of Infrastructure at Siemens Corporation. "We spend zero time managing storage, our database performance is off the charts, and backup is built right in so we get data protection without the headache of dedicated backup devices." Record Product Innovation Fueled by one of the four largest financing events in 2016, Datrium maintained a blistering pace of product releases in 2017. The company became the first to introduce several innovative technologies for server-powered converged infrastructure, including: Convergence of primary and backup storage into a single unified system, including a scalable and searchable backup-class catalog, granular VM and vDisk level backup and replication, and in-flight and at-rest data encryption with full data reduction. Split Provisioning software that mirrors modern hyperscale architectures to deliver petabyte-scale, massive performance, and fully independent scaling of capacity and I/O processing. Cloud DVX, a cloud-native instance of Datrium DVX that offers recovery services for VMs and stateful containers running in DVX on-premises, and includes global cloud deduplication – a killer app for any public cloud-based deployment. Strategic Partnerships Datrium has also seen tremendous growth in both go-to-market and ecosystem partnerships. The Datrium channel has grown to 200 authorized partners, including a silver level relationship with CDW. New ecosystem partnerships have spiked to 30 from six just two quarters ago, and now include: New platform relationships with Arista, Docker, Intel, Mellanox, nVidia, and RedHat. New guest OS relationships with CentOS, RedHat and Suse. New application relationships with Amazon Web Services, Citrix, Cloudera, Kroll Ontrack, Oracle, SAP and Splunk. The combination of technology advancements and strategic partnerships have resulted in 2 out of 3 customers selecting Datrium DVX and Open Convergence over Nutanix HCI.  A desire to avoid HCI cluster sprawl, while achieving high performance for large data sets, affordable double-failure protection, and the ability to integrate with existing server infrastructures were some of the reasons customers cited for choosing Datrium over Nutanix. Market Expansion Stimulated by strong customer demand and competitive success, Datrium is moreover announcing the doubling of its sales and solution architect staff across the U.S., and is opening Datrium subsidiaries to serve both Canada and Japan. The new Datrium subsidiaries are partnering with value-added solution providers to deliver Datrium DVX products to their respective markets. In addition to business development, sales and marketing, both subsidiaries provide local technical support and services. New Executive Talent Important additions to Datrium's executive staff were made throughout the year. Mike Park was appointed as VP of Operations, and Andre Leibovici, who left Nutanix in May, was appointed as VP of Solutions and Alliances. In addition, Datrium added a new member to its board of directors, Dave Schneider who is currently the Chief Revenue Officer at ServiceNow. "It has been a phenomenal year for Datrium and our customers," said Brian Biles, Datrium CEO and co-founder. "Our tremendous customer adoption and revenue growth has also attracted leading IT companies like Oracle, Red Hat, and Citrix to partner with Datrium. We look forward to helping more companies benefit from open converged infrastructure in 2018."

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/datrium-announces-record-customer-adoption-of-open-convergence-300589932.html

Lenovo Data Center Leader On HPE/Dell Competition, Meltdown And Spectre Strategy, And Game-Changing AI Push In 2018

Leading the channel charge for @Lenovo 's #datacenter organization is sales veteran @StefanBockhop, who said Lenovo will outpace its server and #hyperconverged competition through technology differentiation as well as  new initiatives around #artificialintelligence and the SMB market. "AI is going to be a game-changer for a lot of our partners," said Bockhop, executive director of North American channels for Lenovo's Data Center Group, who has been with the vendor since 2005. "We are taking a very forward-thinking position with our alliance teams, our solutions teams and our partners, saying, 'Hey, let's help our customers through this journey.'" In an interview with CRN, Bockhop talks about the biggest partner initiatives in 2018, market competition, and how the company is working with Intel to combat the global Meltdown and Spectre security issues.

http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/data-center/300098536/crn-interview-lenovo-data-center-leader-on-hpe-dell-competition-meltdown-and-spectre-strategy-and-game-changing-ai-push-in-2018.htm

Cohesity Presents Joint Solution With Cisco at Cisco Live 2018 Barcelona Conference

BARCELONA, Spain, Jan. 29, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- @Cohesity, the leader of #hyperconverged #secondarystorage, announced that it will reveal how leading enterprises are simplifying and consolidating their secondary storage infrastructures using a joint solution with @Cisco during two sessions at the Cisco Live 2018 conference in Barcelona. Cohesity Principal Solutions Architect Damien Philip will lead the presentation, “Hyperconverged secondary storage, data protection and much more,” scheduled to take place on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 1:50 - 2:05 p.m. local time (CET) and Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2:10 p.m. - 2:25 p.m. CET. Cohesity and Cisco partnered to simplify secondary storage infrastructure and put an enterprise’s data to use. Whether data resides on primary or secondary storage, Cisco and Cohesity can put all data to good use, which maximizes the return on any storage investment. Along with seeing how enterprises leverage the joint secondary storage solution from Cohesity and Cisco, attendees will learn how hyperconverged secondary storage is eliminating complexities of a siloed environment. Cohesity enables customers to increase efficiency and reduce total cost of ownership as well as leverage the economics of cloud services for secondary storage.

http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/Cohesity-Presents-Joint-Solution-With-Cisco-at-Cisco-Live-2018-Barcelona-Conference-1014417775

Dell EMC Restructures Infrastructure Organizations To 'Streamline' Product Road Maps, Speed Go-To-Market

In a major initiative to streamline #DellEMC 's infrastructure product road maps and go-to-market speed, the company is ending its Converged Platforms and Solution Division and moving its #hyperconverged and converged infrastructure teams into Dell's core server and storage business units. "CPSD as we know it today as an independent organization is no longer," said Matt Baker, senior vice president of Dell EMC strategy and planning, in an interview with CRN. "We're moving our hyper-converged and converged solutions closer to our core product groups. … This is all about streamlining how we build and deliver systems, and that should be a benefit not just to our direct customers, but also to our channel partners." Dell EMC's hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) and high-performance computing (HPC) teams are being moved under its Server Division, led by Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, president and general manager of the division. Gil Shneorson will continue to lead Dell's VMware-aligned HCI offers, while Dan McConnell will still lead its ecosystem HCI offers. Both will now report to Gorakhpurwalla. [Related: 'Refuse To Lose': Dell EMC Primes Its Partners For A Storage Revolution] The company's converged infrastructure (CI) team will now be part of Dell EMC's core Storage Division, led by Jeffrey Boudreau, senior vice president and general manager of the division. Boudreau will lead the VxBlock and Vscale product strategy to get converged infrastructure closer to its core storage business, according to Baker. "A material portion of the core enterprise storage space is driven by converged infrastructure. The CI elements from a product definition and delivery will be moved into our core storage organization," said Baker. "Tom Burns, who is our networking lead, will help out with a portion of the engineering and validation side of how we build CI systems." [Sponsored Suggested Post: Unlock your hidden growth potential with Intermedia Discover how a partnership with Intermedia is the key to building and growing your cloud business. Hear solution provider success stories.] Chad Sakac, who previously led Dell EMC's CPSD organization, will continue to be an infrastructure leader for the company, although he has yet to have a new official title, according to Baker. In addition, Dell EMC's Ready Solutions group, with the exception of its HPC and Cloud groups, will consolidate under the leadership of Kash Shaikh, vice president of product management and marketing. Shaikh will report to Burns, senior vice president of networking, service provider and enterprise infrastructure at Dell EMC. Rob Steele, practice manager for RoundTower Technologies, a Cincinnati-based solution provider and Dell EMC partner, said bringing the HCI and CI teams under core groups "makes perfect sense" and "is a great move" by Dell EMC. "We've done this internally at Roundtower, too, where we initially separated out the hyper-converged and converged solutions and created it almost like it was a separate product set. So customers viewed it as, 'Oh we don’t want that, we just want to keep doing our normal stuff.' They were looking at it as this high entry point or they needed different expertise to get in there, which is somewhat true, but we're seeing more customers are now embracing it as more of the core of their data center," said Steele. "Just like what server and storage was before, it makes more sense as far as alignment and selling motion goes to have it all under Dell's core businesses versus separate entities," Steele said. On the channel front, Baker said partners shouldn't expect any changes other than the ability for Dell EMC to deliver "better products faster" to solution providers. "We've been at this for a little over a year in terms of the combination of Dell EMC, and a lot of the changes are really driven by the operational footprint of how you produce a system, how it goes through system test, etc. So it's really less about product decisions and more about how do we streamline the pipeline of products from conception to delivery for our customers the fastest way with the highest quality and greatest set of features and most amount of leverage," said Baker. "This move is really all about getting better products into the hands of our customers faster and has very little to do with product decisions and/or people. It's really about simplification and just improving the organization and how we serve our customers," he said.

https://www.crn.com/news/data-center/300098436/dell-emc-restructures-infrastructure-organizations-to-streamline-product-road-maps-speed-go-to-market.htm

CRN Exclusive Interview: Meet Nutanix's New Channel Chief

The new channel chief at @Nutanix told @CRN he's planning to grow the business by evolving the #hyperconverged infrastructure powerhouse's channel program to better help partners displace rival technologies. @Rodney Foreman, who started in the position earlier this year after a stint leading channel efforts at @Informatica and a long career before that at @IBM, said his team is crafting a long-term strategy to better enable partners and help them seize on the natural competitive advantages of Nutanix's technology. "This product portfolio we have at Nutanix is really on the leading edge of what customers are doing in the way of innovation in their data centers," Foreman told CRN. "It's refreshing for me to be in a company that's providing innovative technology to customers, and not technology that's dated and not where the market is headed." [Related: Partners 'All-In' On A 2018 Nutanix Software Offensive As Sales Continue To Surge] Hyper-converged is becoming a highly sought specialization in the channel, Foreman said, driven by customer demand for flexible private clouds. Nutanix does a majority of its business through partners, so wants to be innovative with the program it offers them. The company's partners often have pre-existing relationships with large distributors, which also help bring to market products from vendors such as Citrix Systems, Splunk and SAP. That creates natural synergies with those software companies. [Sponsored Suggested Post: Help your customers start a revolution Become a Couchbase partner and help your clients see faster time to value with the world’s first Engagement Database. Learn about PartnerEngage.]  "There's a lot of overlap in the partners we will work with because we provide the platform for those applications," Foreman said. The distributors aggregate solutions for which Nutanix wants to be the most robust, scalable platform, he said. Since joining Nutanix, Foreman has been talking to partners he knew from back in his IBM days. He wants their input in evolving the program to provide a more consistent way for partners to see revenue and profit, while delivering the best enablement to reach the market and effectively sell the company's products. Nutanix is already growing faster than 40 percent, but the San Jose, Calif.-based company sees its channel as a vehicle to increase that pace of expansion, he told CRN. "With some of the innovative things I'm thinking about doing in the channel, we'll grow at a faster pace. We're just hitting the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we can do in the channel," Foreman said. The strength of hyper-converged infrastructure lies in the speed and scalability with which it can be deployed, and the flexibility it delivers to customers choosing a multi-cloud, hybrid strategy. "If a customer wants to run on AWS and one day switch to another cloud platform very quickly, we provide that capability," he said. But Nutanix's program needs to make sure partners effectively deliver that message to enterprises unfamiliar with the technology. "To be competitive in the channel, you constantly have to evaluate where you are in comparison to your competition and make sure all aspects of your program are competitive and consistent," Foreman said. "I think over time we'll be revising the program so that we can offer more incentives and offer some focus items to drive the partners," he said. "Partners allow us to reach more of that market so the program needs to support that." In the past, Nutanix hasn't done enough to help partners win new customers by challenging their legacy infrastructure solutions, Foreman said. The program changes to come will tackle that goal of displacing rival technologies through lead-passing, enablement, and tiering structure, he said. The three-year strategy Foreman and his new team are crafting encompasses the entire partner ecosystem, including VARs, value-added distributors, global systems integrators, as well as the OEM partners and ISVs that use Nutanix as a platform. But Nutanix is more concerned with enabling the current base of partners than adding many more, he said. "The goal is to have quality partners that we enable and support with marketing and sales to deliver great results. We have some of the top partners in the industry already, we just need to make them more productive," he said. Ira Horowitz, vice president of alliances at Trianz, in a way followed Foreman to Nutanix. Trianz was familiar with Foreman from his work with IBM and Informatica, and Horowitz said he always found him to be "a channel champion." When Foreman accepted the job at Nutanix, the global solution provider based in Santa Clara, Calif., first seriously evaluated the technology, and found a solution ideal for its cloud practice. Customers are hedging their bets with hyper-scale clouds, often entering contracts with multiple providers. The technology offered by Nutanix can bridge those environments, Horowitz said. Foreman, through programs he spearheaded in the past, was an advocate for rewarding partners who differentiated their practices through technical training, sales and excellence in delivery. Horowitz expects him to do the same at Nutanix. That's appealing to a solution provider like Trianz that likes to take advantage of enablement opportunities to get up to speed quickly, but then drive customer acquisition and engagements on its own. Foreman "fights to put the channel in front, fights to recognize the value of what that ecosystem brings to the organization, and he builds a program that really incents, drives and rewards the partners who are building the value-add," Horowitz said. "No channel is without conflict. I've always found Rodney to be fair, even-balanced and approachable."

https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/300098291/crn-exclusive-interview-meet-nutanixs-new-channel-chief.htm

Software-defined storage products: 2017 Products of the Year finalists

The #softwaredefinedstorage products selected as finalists in Storage magazine and SearchStorage's 2017 Products of the Year competition reflect the latest trends in #flash, #cloud and #container technologies. The finalists include a mix of new and updated software-defined storage products, and many support performance-boosting nonvolatile memory express ( #NVMe) #flash technology and extended cloud and container storage options. To be eligible in the Products of the Year competition, a software-defined storage product must run on standard servers with no dependencies on the underlying hardware. Finalists in the category include software that pools and centrally manages storage, file systems, object stores and software powering hyper-converged infrastructure. Software-defined storage products that made it through the finalist cut include the following: DataCore Software SANsymphony PSP6 Update The PSP6 upgrade of DataCore Software's SANsymphony storage virtualization product enhanced REST API integration with more than 200 new operation methods. It also lets customers use the Kubernetes PersistentVolume API to orchestrate deployment, operations and scaling of containerized applications. The update optimized the product's parallel I/O capabilities to improve performance. Elastifile Cloud File System The distributed Elastifile Cloud File System (ECFS) can pool server-based flash storage and present it to applications through a global namespace, enabling any server in the cluster to directly access files. ECFS uses a distributed metadata model and enables linear performance scalability. The product supports global deduplication, compression and snapshot shipping, and its CloudConnect feature lets customers tier colder data to cloud-based object storage. PRO+ Content E-Zine Storage startup trends: Vendors to watch in 2018 E-Zine Dell EMC acquisition: The deal of the century a year later 360 Guide IT industry trends: Six major vendors chart new courses Excelero NVMesh 1.1 Excelero's NVMesh software virtualizes NVMe-based storage, pools the capacity of the SSDs and uses Remote Direct Memory Access networking to connect them. Any Linux-based host server running the NVMesh block client can access the virtual block volumes to enable applications to get the latency, throughput and IOPS of local NVMe. Excelero's Remote Direct Drive Access technology disaggregates storage from applications to save server CPU for the applications. Hedvig Distributed Storage Platform 3.0 The Hedvig Distributed Storage Platform supports scale-out block, file and object storage on premises and in public clouds, and manages the storage as a single pool. New FlashFabric technology adds tiering capabilities between two different classes of SSDs, whether SAS or SATA, NVMe-based PCI Express (PCIe) or 3D XPoint. Other new features include AES 256-bit software-based encryption for data in use, in flight and at rest, and CloudScale plugins for Red Hat products, Veritas OpenStorage Technology and VMware vSphere. IBM Spectrum Scale 4.2.3 IBM enhanced its Spectrum Scale clustered file system -- based on the company's General Parallel File System -- in areas such as cloud data sharing, NVMe, audit logging and general usability. IBM also beefed up support for iSCSI, Hadoop Distributed File System and OpenStack object storage. Pivot3 Acuity HCI Platform 2.1.1 Pivot3's Acuity hyper-converged infrastructure platform added policy-based management with quality of service to enable customers to provide more resources for high-priority applications. The software update also enables the system to take greater advantage of NVMe-based PCIe flash storage to reduce latency and improve performance. Qumulo File Fabric Qumulo File Fabric (QF2) runs on premises and in the public cloud, and it claims to provide billion-file capacity. QF2 gives customers programmatic access to features and administrative settings through a programmable REST API and includes cloud-based monitoring to proactively detect disk failures. Additional capabilities include real-time analytics down to the file level, snapshots to the directory level and continuous replication. Red Hat Ceph Storage 2.3 Red Hat's commercially supported open source Ceph distribution added a lightweight NFS interface to the Ceph Object Gateway, letting users access the same object storage data via NFS or Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) API. Compatibility with the Hadoop S3A file system client enables big data analytics applications -- such as Apache Hadoop MapReduce, Hive, Presto and Spark -- to read and write data from the Ceph object store. Red Hat Ceph Storage 2.3 also introduced an option to deploy Ceph in containers. Scality Ring7 Scality stood out among the software-defined storage products for steps it took to unite its scale-out file system and object store, and enable users to access the same data from either protocol. Ring7 supports versioning and replication for object and file storage; data encryption; secure write once, read many (WORM) change control; and cross-region replication to Scality Ring and Amazon's S3 cloud object storage for disaster recovery. SUSE Enterprise Storage 4 SUSE's Enterprise Storage 4, the company's commercially supported Ceph distribution, added support for the Ceph file system, or CephFS, to round out its unified block, object and file capabilities. The software update enabled long-distance replication for block storage and multisite object storage replication to improve disaster recovery. SUSE also enhanced cluster orchestration through open source Salt configuration management software, improved the graphical user interface to ease management and expanded hardware choice with support for 64-bit ARM processors. WekaIO Matrix The WekaIO Matrix scale-out parallel file system is designed to pool server-based flash SSDs for high-performance workloads and tier cold data to object storage in public and private clouds. Matrix presents the local flash storage as a single global namespace to host applications, and the software extends the namespace beyond the flash pool to offload colder data to less expensive S3-compliant and OpenStack Swift-compliant object storage. 

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/450432330/Software-defined-storage-products-2017-Products-of-the-Year-finalists

Cohesity Increases Revenue 600 Percent in 2017, Validating Global Enterprises’ Need for Hyperconverged Secondary Storage

SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 09, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --  @Cohesity , the leader in #hyperconverged #secondarystorage, today announced accelerating global enterprise and federal agency adoption, leading to a 600 percent increase in 2017 sales revenue. Over the past eight months, Cohesity’s new customer count doubled and includes a dozen Fortune 500 companies. In addition, more than half of all customers deployed Cohesity cloud services. International business continues to be a major strength for the company, generating over 30 percent of bookings last year, validating the strong global demand for Cohesity solutions. Growing revenue and customer demand are fueling dramatic company expansion, including a doubling of employees, a move to the company’s new San Jose headquarters, and the opening of a new office in Research Triangle Park (RTP). The company and its products garnered multiple accolades in 2017 and attracted significant new executive leadership, alliances and channel partnerships. 2017 Accomplishments Accelerating Customer Growth Global Fortune 1000 companies and federal agencies increasingly rely on Cohesity for data protection, driving a 600 percent year-over-year revenue increase in 2017. Nearly half of all customers made repeat purchases in 2017 resulting in many installations exceeding 1 petabyte of Cohesity storage. Adoption is strong across all industry sectors including financial services, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, media and entertainment, high tech, and federal. More than half of all customers deployed Cohesity’s cloud services. A sampling of significant new customers across industry sectors include Verizon subsidiary XO Communications, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Energy, the U.S. Air Force, leading environmental processor Valley Proteins, Inc., University of California at Santa Barbara, and European IT service provider Thekking. Global Company Expansion Cohesity’s growth has been fueled by a $90 million Series C funding round co-led by investors Google Ventures and Sequoia Capital with participation from strategic investors Cisco Investments and HPE, along with venture investors Accel, ARTIS Ventures, Battery Ventures, DHVC, Foundation Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Trinity Ventures, and Wing Venture Capital. Cohesity christened its new San Jose headquarters on December 11, 2017, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony that included San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and City Councilmember Raul Peralez (District 3). The company tripled the size of its former office to accommodate the doubling of its headcount to more than 300 employees in the past year with room for significant growth in 2018 and beyond. Strong international customer demand drove global expansion to serve the DACH region in Europe, with a new Cohesity DACH team in Germany, headed by Klaus Seidl, and the APAC region, with a new APAC headquarters in Australia. Strengthening Executive Bench Today Cohesity also announced the appointment of its first Chief Marketing Officer, Lynn Lucas, a Veritas Technologies and Cisco Systems veteran. Lynn was hired to strengthen the leadership team and drive customer adoption and accelerate company growth. Cohesity also welcomed new Board Member Carl Eschenbach from Sequoia Capital, and five other new executives, including President and Chief Operating Officer Rob Salmon, Global Sales Leader Mark Parrinello, Vice President of Engineering Vineet Abraham, Vice President of Worldwide Channels Todd Palmer and Vice President of EMEA Sales Klaus Seidl. Product Innovation Cohesity Orion 5.0, the industry’s first storage platform that combines end-to-end data protection and big data storage on distributed, infinitely scalable architecture, was launched in August 2017. The recently introduced Cohesity DataPlatform Cloud Edition now runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Cohesity also announced native integration with Pure Storage FlashArray//M and the availability of Cohesity DataPlatform Cloud Edition (CE) in Microsoft’s Azure Marketplace. Analyst Accolades Cohesity was also honored to receive Gartner’s Cool Vendors in Storage Technologies, 20171 report authored by analysts Dave Russell, Arun Chandrasekaran, Julia Palmer, Raj Bala, Alan Dayley, Pushan Rinnen and Garth Landers at Gartner, Inc. Forrester named Cohesity in its Oct. 30, 2017, report Three Vendors Disrupting Integrated Secondary Storage And Data Protection Integrated Secondary Storage And Data Protection Will Gain Widespread Adoption In 24 Months authored by analyst Naveen Chhabra. Industry Recognition More than a dozen organizations have recognized Cohesity, awarding accolades ranging from Forbes’ Next Billion-Dollar Startups 2017, LinkedIn’s “Startups: The 50 industry disruptors you need to know now,” and CRN’s 2017 Emerging Vendors to NorthFace’s ScoreBoard Award for Top-Rated Customer Service and Support, Bay Area News Group’s 2017 Top Workplace, and Europe’s SVC Award for “Hyperconvergence Company of the Year 2017.” Strategic Partnerships More than 200 channel partners helped Cohesity expand into new regions and serve a broader range of customers. A partnership with Lenovo Global IT marked Cohesity’s first foray into China. In addition, CRN named Cohesity’s Head of Americas Channel to its prestigious list of 2017 Channel Chiefs. HPE developed and is reselling a pre-configured, certified scale-out Cohesity storage solution combined with HPE's enterprise-class servers and network switches. As a member of the Cisco Solution Partner Program, Cohesity helps customers realize the benefits of Cohesity’s software defined storage solution on Cisco’s UCS and Cisco HyperFlex platforms. Comments The company’s 2017 achievements have been spearheaded by storage innovator and Cohesity Founder Mohit Aron, who has established himself as the “father of hyperconvergence.” He has more than 15 years of experience in building scalable, high-performance distributed systems — first at Google, where he was a lead developer on the Google File System and then as a co-founder of Nutanix. “Cohesity is leading a massive transformation of the data center, converging silos of storage across the data center and multi-cloud environments, helping IT become more efficient, reduce costs, and do more with their data for their organizations,” said Mohit Aron, chief executive officer and founder, Cohesity. “The results of the last year have far exceeded our expectations, showing that hyperconverged secondary storage has transitioned from a groundbreaking new technology in 2016 to a critical, enterprise business solution in 2017.” 1 Gartner, “Cool Vendors in Storage Technologies, 2017” by Dave Russell, Arun Chandrasekaran, Julia Palmer, Raj Bala, Alan Dayley, Pushan Rinnen, and Garth Landers, May 12, 2017. Disclaimer Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in our research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. About Cohesity Cohesity makes your data work for you by consolidating secondary storage silos onto a hyperconverged, web-scale data platform that spans both private and public clouds. Enterprise customers begin by radically streamlining their backup and data protection, then converge file and object services, test/dev instances, and analytic functions to provide a global data store. Cohesity counts many Global 1000 companies and federal agencies among its rapidly growing customer base and was named to Forbes’ “Next Billion-Dollar Startups 2017,” LinkedIn’s “Startups: The 50 Industry Disruptors You Need to Know Now,” and CRN’s “2017 Emerging Vendors in Storage” lists. For more information, visit our website www.cohesity.com and blog https://cohesity.com/blog/, follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/cohesity and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/3750699/ and like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/cohesity/. Media Contacts Jenni Adair Head of Corporate Communications jenni@cohesity.com 650-400-1871 BOCA Communications for Cohesity cohesity@bocacommunications.com A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/56b92d07-6ac6-40ca-b298-d890fcd3743d

https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/01/09/1286056/0/en/Cohesity-Increases-Revenue-600-Percent-in-2017-Validating-Global-Enterprises-Need-for-Hyperconverged-Secondary-Storage.html

Dell EMC to kick-start Trail Blazer Program for Partners

@Dell EMC has announced the launch of #TrailBlazer program for focus partners and distributors. The objective of the program is to develop an ecosystem for partners and distributors and will be supported by @Vmware. The program is expected to play a key role in generating consistent and repeatable business model for marketing #VxRail. As the only fully integrated, preconfigured, and pre-tested VMware hyper-converged infrastructure appliance family on the market, VxRail dramatically simplifies IT operations while lowering overall capital and operational costs. Combined with Dell EMC PowerEdge server options, VxRail offers highly configurable appliances that meet any use case. Under the Trail Blazer program, the identified partners & distributors will be eligible to purchase VxRail demo unit. The program will also offer incentives for partners for the Vmware component in VxRail and will provide accounts alignment with select partners. Each focus partner will be able to leverage two VMware Certified Professional engineers to be POC competent. Dell EMC fully recognizes the vital role played by partner & distributor ecosystem in delivering the innovation, expertise, and excellence enterprise customers are seeking today,” stated Anil Sethi, Vice President and General Manager-Channels – ‎Dell EMC. “Relying on channel partners to provide world-class service to enterprise customers reaffirms our confidence in every organization participating in our Trail Blazer Program. Dell EMC VxRail is one of the fastest growing HCI appliances worldwide with rapid customer adoption and we expect Trail Blazer program to help our partners to be competent on driving pipeline and POCs of VxRail” he added. Customers transforming their IT are increasingly turning to hyper-converged infrastructure as an ideal foundation for simplifying IT today and for the future. Our partners are ready to help customers digitally transform and modernize their IT with world-class capabilities spanning hardware, software, solutions and IT operations. We intend to leverage this to reach out to customers and make them understand how VxRail can make a real difference for their business” said Anshuman Rai, Director Sales, Converged Platform & Solutions Division, Dell EMC. Dell EMC VxRail™, powered by vSAN and offered with Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, is the only specifically developed and fully optimized hyper-converged appliance co-designed and built with VMware. Simply put, VxRail is the easiest and fastest way to simplify and extend a VMware environment. HCI is the fastest-growing part of the IT infrastructure market today as businesses of all sizes desire for substantial infrastructure simplification. The converged market will be USD 180M with a modest ACGR of 9%. Dell EMC continues to be the undisputed leader in the overall converged systems market with 28.9% market share and is the fastest growing HCI vendor, more than doubling sales year-over-year for Q1 2017, according to IDC.

http://www.dqindia.com/dell-emc-kick-start-trail-blazer-program-partners/

Fueled by new features, Nutanix drives deeper into multicloud country

It may have lost the market lead in #hyperconverged infrastructure to @Dell EMC, but in @Nutanix Inc.’s new branding, the HC in #HCI might as well stand for hybrid cloud. The company is betting this will attract more customers, pushing further into #multicloud management with its just-released #Acropolis Operating System 5.5. Can the new features together with its partner ecosystem deliver a private cloud experience to rival the public cloud? “True private clouds haven’t been built yet,” said @Sunil Potti (pictured), chief product officer at Nutanix. What passes for private cloud now does not allow applications to travel seamlessly from the on-premises data center to the public cloud, he added. To achieve this hybridization, they must be standardized, commoditized and then harmonized with public clouds like Amazon Web Services Inc. and Google Cloud Platform, according to Potti. A friction-free on-ramp to public clouds accessible from the comfort of a company’s home-base data center may persuade many that private hybrid cloud is the way to go. “If you can bottle up the AWS or GCP experience and funnel it inside the data center, there will be a ton of workloads that stay inside,” he stated.

https://siliconangle.com/blog/2018/01/08/fueled-new-features-nutanix-drives-deeper-multicloud-country-nextconf/

Software is eating the world – and Nutanix's hardware revenues

Analysis @Nutanix wants be seen as a sexy software business and not a hardware appliance biz stuck with crap commodity hardware margins. So it is changing its business mode to position itself as a software-focused company. Senior Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers said the #hyperconverged firm "currently sells hardware and software products with its software running either on its own hardware or that of its channel partners. [Nutanix's] first fiscal 2018 quarter's hardware-only revenue totalled $80.4m, 29.3 per cent of total revenue. It was $48.8m a year ago." Nutanix's hardware is contract-manufactured by @Supermicro and @Flextronics. In the Nutanix's most recent earnings call, company CEO @Dheeraj Pandey said: “We are increasingly taking a software-centric approach to go-to-market and financial reporting.” CFO Duston Williams added: "Today, we are software company, more specifically an enterprise cloud operating systems company, that up until now has delivered a majority of its software via its own branded appliance and recognise the associated hardware revenue. … This left many investors wondering, if we really are a software company or just another storage or appliance company." Part of the problem was that Nutanix recognised pass-through hardware revenues in its results. So: “Going forward over time, Nutanix will emerge [as] exactly what it is: an enterprise cloud operating systems company,” meaning a software company. He said: “We will begin the migration away from pass-through hardware related revenue. Beginning last quarter, we started the gradual migration related from recognising pass-through revenue, attributed to the hardware portion of our business.” Currently "the hardware portion of our business is approximately 26 per cent of our total billings. This transition will come in two parts. First, with straightforward changes that will allow us to step aside for most hardware-only invoicing by enabling our legacy appliance manufactures to begin selling the NX hardware directly to our distributors. And secondly, by simply focusing on more software-only transactions, allowing our customers to them choose to run on a large number of server platforms." Red line is pass-through hardware revenue – blue line software. Chart shows the modelled changes going forward. “We expect this transition to take a year or so and the result of elimination of at least 80 per cent of our pass-through hardware related revenue. All things being equal, the direct impact of this specific change would result in significantly higher software content and significantly higher gross margins with no change to our gross and gross profit dollars.” Over time, Nutanix will start adding writeable Software-as-a-Service revenue with its Xi Cloud service offerings. Williams said: “Over time, we will start to position the company for increasing writable Software-as-a-Subscription revenue.” There will be a Xi Cloud disaster recovery service launched in mid-2018 via a Google Cloud Platform partnership. Starting in the third fiscal 2018 quarter, starting February 1, 2018; “We will start the process of compensating our sales teams on software-only related bookings. Once the change is fully implemented sales representatives will no longer be compensated for pass-through hardware sales.” As a software business it compares itself favourably with other software and service companies such as Splunk, Netezza, Tableau and others in terms of size, growth and gross margins over the past year. That means being an $800 million shared software and support infrastructure company with gross margins above 80 per cent. There will be channel changes, with Rakers noting Nutanix is working on "transitioning its distribution alignment for software-only sales, including the transition of its international distribution models from contracting directly with hundreds of individual resellers to contracting with a smaller number of larger global distributors". Rakers is modelling Nutanix's hardware-only revenue decline to a sub-$20m/quarter level by the Jan 2019 quarter. He has said he believes its gross margin will grow from a mid/high-70 per cent range by the end of its fiscal 2018 to a low-80 per cent range by mid fiscal 2019. That should help profitability. The change to a perceived software company could well lift Nutanix's stock price, with investors favouring software companies over hardware ones. That could please investors and that, we think, is one aim of the shift away from hardware. ®

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/05/nutanix_hardware_revenues/

Nutanix Channel Chief On New 'Black-Belt' Partner Certification And Transitioning Into A 'True Software Company' In 2018

Leading The @Nutanix Channel Charge Nutanix has a critical year ahead of it in 2018 as the hyper-converged pioneer begins to transform into a software-only company.  Tasked with leading its channel community into this new era is Nutanix channel chief Bob Wallace. "As we're making this transformation in Nutanix into a true software company, channel partners become more important, not less," said Wallace, vice president of channel, OEM and inside sales at Nutanix, in an interview with CRN. "It puts more of the work of bringing this total solution together into the hands of the channel partner." In an interview with CRN, Wallace explains his channel vision for 2018, new trainings and tools available to partners, and if Nutanix plans to on-board more solution providers this year.

What's the channel charge for 2018?

As we're making this transformation in Nutanix into a true software company, channel partners become more important, not less. We couldn't make this transition into a software company if we didn't already have a foundation of committed channel partners. We couldn't do it. It puts more of the work of bringing this total solution together into the hands of the channel partner. They become that key integration point. If we didn't have those partners, it would be much more difficult to make this transition into software.

What is one big partner initiative this year?

We are expanding the training available. The highest level of training, really a black-belt level of certification that we call NPSX [Nutanix Platform Sales Expert], mirrors our highest and deepest level of technical training, which is called NPX [Nutanix Platform Expert] -- which is really an internal focus certification. Our partners are now able to sign up and achieve that highest level of certification. The NPSX involves an in-person certification and testing around being able to not only communicate the Nutanix messaging, but to be able to accurately deal with questions and concerns that customers have. It's an in-person certification to simulate being in front of a customer.

What makes this certification so unique in the market?

When I was with EMC, we did the same thing for our internal sellers but never offered a certification or this type of training level for partners. It's a big resource commitment from Nutanix because to do an in-person certification takes commitment from executives.  That's a big initiative we're rolling out to really make sure that our partners are equipped to be successful in talking about this next-level of enterprise cloud because many of them come from a hardware-centric background and maybe have layered on or expanded into hyper-converged. In an enterprise cloud world, it's exponentially more important to be able to articulate that value to customers.

What else will you be offering solution providers in 2018 to help drive more sales?

We have a tool called XTribe that we use for engaging with customers to really give them a source of information. Customers can log in. We provide information to them that's significant to their business and contextual to the products they have – a source of information to get customers into Nutanix. We've extended that in a separate database course into our channel partner seller community. At a high level, it's a rewards program where we can do contests and give them prizes that tie them back into Nutanix in a way that makes them like a customer but like also our sales team. I know some vendors have partner training portals, but this really takes it to the next level.

Does Nutanix expect to on-board more partners with the new software-centric approach?

I think we will. We will add some partners that really specialize in software sales. There is an opportunity to get closer to [solution providers] who maybe weren't interested in Nutanix before who are application sellers that are selling the software. VARs that are selling those types of products as opposed to hardware-centric VARs. But it will be fairly minimal.

So you don't expect many changes in the channel this year?

The majority of our change from a channel perspective and our shift to software as a company really ties in with many of the goals that our existing channel partners have already seen. Nutanix partners are willing to be disruptive in the market and see the change that has been coming, which is what Nutanix has been talking about since the beginning. Many of our top partners today have invested in Nutanix because they understood that this shift to software is not a flavor of the month or reactive thing, in my mind, it's the fulfillment of the original promise of Nutanix.

Are partners ready for this shift?

Many of our most successful partners saw this shift coming. They understood that Nutanix would need to not only talk about being a software company, but start operating in the market as a software company. It creates a lot of opportunity for them. They get the opportunity to get engaged with the customers at a more expanded consulting engagement level, bringing the solutions together because we're not only talking about hyper-converged these days, we're talking about enterprise cloud. That's the next wave we've been talking about. … The vision of an enterprise cloud and what people are calling hybrid cloud, we've been talking about that and pointing at how hyper-converged is the first step.

Why are solution providers sticking with Nutanix when there's larger hyper-converged players now like Cisco-Springpath and Hewlett Packard Enterprise-SimpliVity?

Our partners gravitated to Nutanix because when they look at the options in the market, they can see that the completeness of vision from many of [our competitors] are dead end and/or is kind of a me-too approach.

It's also how we treat them. We are really partners. For manufacturers in many cases, it's very one-sided. It's an arrogant approach to looking at channel partners and doing score cards on channel partners. The traps that they walk into is that many manufacturres get fired by their channel partners, they just never know it. So we take a different approach to understand from them, 'What is it you're looking to get out of Nutanix and this partnership? How is our own score card?' So that way we don't get fired by our channel partners.

What percentage of Nutanix sales are direct versus indirect?

It's nearly 100 percent. There may have been a customer we went direct with, maybe a government customer, but our policy is 100 percent channel. Our reps don't do direct deals.

Why should partners increase their Nutanix investment in 2018?

Our channel program is really focused around driving the competency of our partners around Nutanix. One of the key benefits of moving from just being an authorized partner to a higher-level Gold or Platinum partner is the engagement of our channel sales organization. From a strategy perspective, our basic tenet is focused partners. My organization has designated and defined those partners that we as a company are going to invest in. It's about the partners who are making the commitment and investment in working with us. At the lower tier, they don’t get the benefits of working with us or our investments from an MDF or access perspective.

How many 'focused partners' have you chosen?

We have picked out a select per-region group of partners. It's several hundred per theater. It essentially requires them to make a commitment to Nutanix, then Nutanix will invest back in them from a deal registration perspective, the pricing from Nutanix and access to MDF programs.

Why should partners be pumped about Nutanix in 2018?

Nutanix is only limited by our ability to tell customers about what we do and what we can do for them. It's an exceptional product. The challenge we have is that the majority of people who understand what we do want to take the next step. Then the majority of people who receive a demo on it want to try it; and the majority of people who try it, buy it; and then the majority of people who buy it, buy again and buy more the next time. We need to get what we can do for customers in front of as many people as possible. The key to that reach and leverage is this commitment to our channel community. We have an ecosystem of partners that we've grown with over the years and they're giving us that reach.

http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/virtualization/300097356/nutanix-channel-chief-on-new-black-belt-partner-certification-and-transitioning-into-a-true-software-company-in-2018.htm

The No. 1 Hyperconverged Infrastructure Vendor is…

@Dell EMC kept its No. 1 #hyperconverged infrastructure ( #HCI) vendor ranking and grew its lead over No. 2 @Nutanix during the third quarter of 2017, according to IDC. While overall converged systems revenue increased 10.8 percent year-over-year to $2.99 billion, once again the HCI segment grew the fastest. Hyperconverged sales increased 68 percent compared to last year, generating $1 billion in revenue, or one-third of the overall converged systems sales.

Dell EMC was the largest supplier in the HCI segment with $306.8 million in revenue and a 30.6 percent share. The company also extended its lead over frenemy Nutanix, which made $207.4 million from its HCI sales, representing the second largest market share (20.7 percent).

Dell EMC’s HCI systems growth was up 158.3 percent year-over-year. Nutanix saw a 61.1 percent increase for the same period.

@Cisco and @Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) slotted into the No. 3 and No. 4 ranking, respectively.

Cisco partners with software company Springpath on its HCI system. In August, Cisco announced plans to buy the startup for $320 million, bringing the HCI software stack in-house.

In a similar story, HPE acquired SimpliVity for $650 million earlier this year, and launched its first HCI system integrated with SimpliVity software in the third quarter of fiscal 2017.

“We do see a consolidation of sorts where players are pulling ahead,” IDC analyst Eric Sheppard told SDxCentral.“Go back a year or two ago where there was a very long tail of [HCI] technology suppliers. Some have been acquired and we’re seeing players start to pull ahead. We’re seeing the large, traditional server players heavily invested in hyperconverged, and they certainly weren’t two years ago.”

IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Converged Systems Trackercovers three segments: certified reference systems and integrated infrastructure; integrated platforms; and hyperconverged systems.

Certified reference systems and integrated infrastructure are pre-integrated, vendor-certified systems containing server hardware, disk storage systems, networking equipment, and basic systems management software. Integrated platforms are sold with additional pre-integrated packaged software and customized system engineering.

Hyperconverged systems combine core storage and compute functionality into a single, highly virtualized platform. A key characteristic of HCI that differentiates these products from other integrated systems is their scale-out architecture and their ability to provide all compute and storage functions through commodity hardware.

HCI Is Fastest Growing Segment

Companies’ awareness about HCI and comfort level with the technology is at an “all-time high,” Sheppard said.

“The most fundamental driver is the operational simplicity,” Sheppard explained. “By moving toward software-defined, eliminating a storage-area network or virtualizing it, you still get the benefits of mobility and networking associated with SANs, but you do it without building out several silos of infrastructure. You end up with this truly converged, consolidated infrastructure.”

Certified reference systems and integrated infrastructure also grew during the third quarter of 2017. This segment generated revenues of $1.44 billion, a 1.5 percent year-over-year increase, and accounted for 48.3 percent of the total converged systems market value.

Dell EMC also led this segment, with $697.2 million in sales and a 48.3 percent share. Cisco and NetAppgenerated $485.5 million in sales from their FlexPod product, up 56.4 percent and representing the second largest share at 33.6 percent.

Meanwhile, integrated platforms sales dropped 19.8 percent during the third quarter, bringing in $542.7 million worth of sales. This amounted to 18.2 percent of the total converged systems market value.

Oracle was the top-ranked supplier of integrated platforms during the quarter with revenues of $240.4 million and a 45.8 percent share of the market segment.

In an email, Bob Wambach, VP of marketing, Dell EMC’s converged platforms and solutions division, said the company’s converged systems help customers simplify their IT infrastructure. “This is the core tenet of our converged and hyper-converged solutions portfolio,” Wambach wrote. “There’s no silver bullet because customers’ needs, environments, and preferences vary. Our customers are telling us they choose Dell EMC because we have market-leading technologies, exceptional global service, and we offer the best entry into transformational IT infrastructure.”

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/the-no-1-hyperconverged-infrastructure-vendor-is/2017/12/

Partners 'All-In' On A 2018 Nutanix Software Offensive As Sales Continue To Surge

@Nutanix partners are betting big on the #hyperconverged pioneer as it shifts to becoming a software-centric company with the goal of expanding its total addressable market (TAM) in 2018. "It is up to companies like us who are category creators to expand the TAM," said Nutanix CEO @Dheeraj Pandey, in an interview with CRN. "This decision to now go all software is the next step in [our] direction around frictionless access … It's about increasing the access to our technology in the most friction-free manner." Throughout 2018, Nutanix will adopt a software-centric strategy where the San Jose, Calif.-based company will focus intently on selling software. Channel partners are confident in Nutanix's ability to transition and see more revenue opportunities ahead with the strategy. [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'] "Nutanix is a very hungry company," said Scott Priest, vice president and general manager for Data Center at Zones, an Auburn, Wash.-based Nutanix partner ranked No. 32 on the CRN 2017 Solution Provider 500 list. "For Nutanix coming out and showing their ability to compete at the appliance level, seeing the growth and adoption rate and acceptance of our customers, I don't have any reason to believe that they can't be successful in this software-first approach … I am very bullish on our growth with them." Priest said Nutanix is Zones' fastest growing vendor within the data center in terms of sales. The vendor's software approach will give the solution provider better flexibility in how hyper-converged solutions are designed for customers. [Sponsored Suggested Post: Building a Successful (and Profitable) Security Practice Learn more about how Fortinet can help you build a successful security practice – from creating efficiencies to engaging with the right vendors.] "Having the software-centric approach allows us that flexibility of going in and having that Nutanix conversation across any platform or installation that a customer may be leaning towards. It's not an 'if this then that' conversation. It's a, 'what about this with that' conversation," said Priest. Suzanne Gallagher, vice president of marketing at Insight, a Tempe, Ariz.-based Nutanix partner ranked No. 13 on CRN's Solution Provider 500 list, said the software offensive aligns with where the market is heading in a software-defined world. "That's exactly where the market has been going and they want to be at the tip of the spear. It's great to see them making such strides in that," said Gallagher. "IT wants to be consumed in different ways and different businesses have different models that they need to consume … We're all-in on their approach." "Nutanix is going to be successful. I'm not worried about them being successful," she added. "We're excited about the growth their having and we're having today."

http://www.crn.com/news/data-center/300097146/partners-all-in-on-a-2018-nutanix-software-offensive-as-sales-continue-to-surge.htm