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

Cohesity Expands EMEA Management Team

MUNICH, Germany and SAN JOSE, Calif., April 04, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- @Cohesity, the leader of #hyperconverged #secondarystorage, today announced it has expanded its management team for Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), and appointed @Johannes Kunz as senior director channel sales EMEA, @Thomas Boele as senior director systems engineering EMEA, and @Claudia Zieschang as head of EMEA field marketing. The company has thus filled three key positions with well-known industry veterans. With this management team, Cohesity wants to increase its market penetration and communicate the benefits of Cohesity’s hyperconverged data platform to even more customers and sales partners. All three come to Cohesity from SimpliVity. Johannes Kunz has more than 25 years of experience in sales, marketing, and management, most of them spent in international positions. As senior director channel sales EMEA at Cohesity, he is responsible for indirect sales, the go-to-market strategy, and channel development in EMEA. Before that, he worked as VP channel sales EMEA for SimpliVity and also held various roles in channel sales, marketing, and product marketing at Hitachi Data Systems. Further companies in his career include NetApp, CA, and Cheyenne Software. With over 20 years of experience in technical presales and marketing position, Thomas Boele brings a vast spectrum of expertise to Cohesity. In his new role as senior director systems engineering EMEA, he focuses on the development and expansion of the presales teams and technical customer service in the region. Before joining Cohesity, he held a variety of positions at SimpliVity, most recently that of vice president solutions architecture EMEA. He has also worked at Riverbed, NetApp, Cisco, and 3Com, amongst others. In the past 15 years, Claudia Zieschang has occupied various positions in marketing at leading US companies. As head of EMEA field marketing for Cohesity, she is responsible for strategic brand development and related activities in EMEA – a role she previously held at SimpliVity. Before joining SimpliVity, she was responsible for marketing in North and Central Europe at F5 Networks and also led strategic enterprise marketing at VMware Germany. “When I joined Cohesity at the end of 2017, I knew that our hyperconverged platform approach and our native integration into the cloud gave us a unique opportunity to start a revolution in the European IT market. However, we can only achieve our ambitious goals with the right people,” said Klaus Seidl, VP sales EMEA at Cohesity. “I am pleased to welcome three experienced colleagues to the team who, together with me and the rest of the team, will turn the EMEA market for data protection and hyperconverged secondary storage upside down and support our growth objectives in the whole region.”

https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/04/04/1459753/0/en/Cohesity-Expands-EMEA-Management-Team.html

Excitable backupper Exagrid eyes IPO

@Exagrid says it's steering a methodical path to an eventual IPO unlike reckless cash-burning storage startups that fail or need to be acquired (rescued). It says its final 2017 quarter was a blast with record bookings and revenue, rounding out a record bookings and revenue year. It gained more than 100 new customers in the quarter, a record number with a first purchase order in the six-figure range, and it opened offices in the Czech Republic, Israel and Australia. The competitive landscape has @Dell EMC #DataDomain as the giant in the space. But @Exagrid CEO and president @Bill Andrews claimed: "We are replacing more and more Data Domain installations. We are seeing @HP #StoreOnce less and less..." And @Rubrik? "We see Rubrik when the customer is looking to replace their backup application. We see Rubrik moving away from selling hardware so we hope that one day we can actually work with them." The @Nutanix #AHV base looks like an opportunity. "We see a great opportunity ahead of us working with the @Comtrade Software's HYCU product to penetrate Nutanix environments running the Nutanix AHV hypervisor versus @VMWare." Exagrid is scaling up its in-house sales effort. "We are in the process of doubling our inside sales team that prospects to find new opportunities. We have one calling centre in the US (Westborough, Massachusetts) and just opened up a second (Bedford). We are also opening up a call centre in Dublin, Ireland." A year ago Exagrid also announced a record fourth quarter, and talked about the possibility of an IPO. Andrews now says: "We are methodically building a sustainable company that can go public. We have met with over a dozen investment banking firms and know exactly what we have to do. "We are very different from all the other backup and storage companies that run hard, burn a ton of cash to grow their top line and then hit a wall and have to sell the company or close their doors such as Tintri, Tegile, Violin, Simplivity, Nimble, and many others." ®
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/08/exagrid_ipo_hopes/

Best Hyperconverged Infrastructure Appliances – DCIG

* The licensing provider is listed at the beginning of each ranking category in which its products are included. One should not draw any negative inferences about any other products included in that ranking. ** OmniStack utilizes Cisco UCS, Dell EMC PowerEdge, HPE, Huawei, or Lenovo servers Products earning the Recommended ranking include the @Pivot3 @Acuity X-Series, @Dell EMC #VxRail Series, Dell EMC #XC63206, @HPE @SimpliVity #OmniCube CN-5400, CN-3400 and CN-2400, @Nutanix NX-8000, NX-6000, NX-3000 and NX-1000 Series. These products are generally distinguished from products ranked Excellent by the following characteristics: 70% of the Recommended products scale to at least 64 nodes in a cluster compared to 46% of products ranked Excellent Average 25TB/RU (terabyte per rack unit) of raw all-flash capacity, more than 2.5X the average of Excellent products Pivot3's Acuity X-Series enables enterprise workload consolidation by integrating NVMe flash and rich QoS technology from its 2016 acquisition of NexGen. Acuity scales to 12 hybrid or 16 all-flash nodes-and up to 516.8 TB of raw all-flash capacity-per virtual Performance Group (vPG). Pivot3 supports unlimited vPGs per cluster. Pivot3's patented Scalar Erasure Coding technology utilizes storage capacity much more efficiently than traditional RAID and replication technologies, delivering storage efficiency of up to 94%. Optional vGPU cards enhance VDI performance and consolidation ratios. The Dell EMC VxRail Series consists of five different platforms designed to address different use cases. The VxRail products utilize VMware virtualization technologies including Virtual SAN. Four of the five platforms are available as hybrid or all-flash configurations. The largest all-flash platform scales to 2.9PB in a 64 node maximum scale-out configuration. Each 1U or 2U appliance contains one or four nodes. The VxRail Series offers erasure coding, deduplication and compression data services on the all-flash configurations. With VSAN 6.2, the product now provides stretch clustering, allowing nodes to be in separate physical locations. The Dell EMC XC6320-6 is 2U, four-node appliance powered by Nutanix software. Dell EMC positions the XC6320 for high-density compute and storage environments, service providers and private cloud deployments. Each all-flash node consists dual Xeon processors and 6 x 3.8TB SSD drives giving the appliance a maximum raw all-flash capacity of 91.2TB. The Dell EMC XC6320-6 offers REST API for automated management and supports multiple hypervisors including Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV), VMware ESXi and Hyper-V. The Dell EMC XC6320-6 is 2U, four-node appliance powered by Nutanix software. Dell EMC positions the XC6320 for high-density compute and storage environments, service providers and private cloud deployments. Each all-flash node consists dual Xeon processors and 6 x 3.8TB SSD drives giving the appliance a maximum raw all-flash capacity of 91.2 TB. The Dell EMC XC6320-6 offers REST API for automated management and supports multiple hypervisors including Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV), VMware ESXi and Hyper-V. Simplivity was acquired by HPE in February 2017. The HPE SimpliVity OmniCube CN-5400, CN-3400 and CN-2400 have a maximum raw storage capacity of 25.6TB, 21.6TB and 10.4TB per hybrid appliance, and 22.4TB, 10.6TB and 8TB in all-flash configurations. The OmniCube scales to eight appliances for a maximum all-flash capacity of 179.2TB. The latest OmniStack software release builds on existing data protection capabilities by adding support for multi-node stretch clustering and SQL Server application-aware backups. SimpliVity appliances utilize OmniStack Accelerator Cards to offload and accelerate deduplication and compression operations. The Nutanix NX-8000, NX-6000, NX-3000, and NX-1000 models all earned the Recommended ranking in this year's Buyer's Guide. Nutanix claims unlimited scaling. A 64-node NX-8000 cluster provides almost 3PB of raw all-flash capacity. Nutanix products support multiple hypervisors including VMware ESXi, Hyper-V and its own KVM-based Acropolis hypervisor. The latest release of the Nutanix AOS now includes native file services through AFS (Acropolis File Services), the Prism self-service portal and ESXi management within Prism.

https://www.storagenewsletter.com/2018/01/02/best-hyperconverged-infrastructure-appliances-dcig/

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/

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: The Hyper-Converged Pioneer Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey says tech giants like Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Cisco lack "conviction" in hyper-convergence regardless of acquisitions both have made in the market. "Whatever we were talking about in 2012, is what HPE is talking about in 2018, 'We can get servers and attach some storage to it and hopefully this will be a good solution for the midmarket or the SMB.' But the problem with HPE is lack of conviction," said Pandey, in an interview with CRN. The San Jose, Calif.-based hyper-converged infrastructure pioneer recently reported first fiscal quarter 2018 sales of $275 million, up 46 percent year over year, while deferred revenues increased nearly 50 percent to $409 million. Pandey said over the coming quarters, Nutanix will adopt a software-centric strategy to expand its total addressable market. Pandey talks to CRN about its software transformation, competition with the likes of Cisco and HPE, and if Nutanix will remain an independent company.

What is your view of the new HPE with SimpliVity?

At the end of the day, we don't even look at HPE-SimpliVity as a competitor because you need the entire operating system. You need the whole stack. You need software-defined storage, but you also need the hypervisor, software-defined networking, software-defined security, you need operations management, systems management, automation – all these pieces have to come together to build an operating system. People don’t just want to buy a hyper-converged box, they're saying, 'Either I go to the cloud or if I stay on-premise, it better be as good as cloud.' So you need to have a holistic operating system story. Software-defined storage is a part of it, but it's only a small part of it.

Are you seeing any market share gain or loss since HPE launched its first joint hyper-converged product this year?

Whatever we were talking about in 2012, is what HPE is talking about in 2018 saying, 'We can get servers and attach some storage to it and hopefully this will be a good solution for the midmarket or the SMB.' Because they want to sell 3PAR and Synergy and all that stuff at the high end of the pyramid, then they want to sell Nimble in the middle of the pyramid, and sell SimpliVity at the base of the pyramid for SMB's. It doesn't work like that. You cannot hedge your way into architecture. You cannot hedge your way into transformation. You have to go all-in, which is what the largest companies like Oracle and Microsoft and Adobe had to do to transform themselves.

So the SimpliVity acquisition doesn't affect Nutanix?

SimpliVity is a little tuck-in that will now be a swim lane in HPE's portfolio. While it's good to charm the analyst, the media, the pundits, at some level if your sellers don’t have the conviction, that there's only one path forward in the re-architecture for the enterprise -- you will basically always be a 'me-too' product.

What are your thoughts on Cisco HyperFlex and their acquisition of SpringPath this year?

It's the exact same argument [for Cisco]. You go back to, you can't have swim lanes where you're saying, 'I'm going to work with Pure [Storage] at the high-end. I'm going to work with someone in the middle segment of the market, and by the way, I'll have HyperFlex just as a way to distribute software.' It doesn't work like that. You can't hedge bet. You can't have a FlexPod and a Pure stack and then something else. You need conviction on what does it mean to transform your customer's business. You can't create ten ways. You can't sit on the sidelines when this massive disruption is happening in cloud computing.

How do you view Cisco as a hyper-converged competitor?

They don’t have an operating system. You need to have an entire stack to go and say, 'Am I better than VMware's vSAN? Am I even getting close enough to the AWS and Azure experience?' Because that is the fork in the road for customers, 'Do I buy VMware and do things on-prem? Or do I look at Amazon or Azure?' So hyper-convergence by itself was a good story in 2012, but today, that idea of software-defined storage running on commodity servers is five years too late by itself.

Can Cisco stay in the hardware business?

It all depends on what the next few years have in store. Look, they all wanted to be in the enterprise mobile computing business five years ago when Apple was seeping into the enterprise with BYOD.  They had tablets, HP acquired Palm, and Cisco had a Cius tablet with Android and things like that – they all had aspirations. At some point when they started to see AWS get into the enterprise a few years ago, they all had cloud vision, but it wasn't done right. So large companies do things just because they feel like they have a better account control than some of these insurgent and new startups or outsiders like Amazon, like Nutanix.

A big focus for @DellEMC in 2018 is their own hyper-converged #VxRail offering. Where does your relationship look like with Dell next year?

They are also trying to figure out their own swim lanes because they have the #VMAX product and the #VNX product, the #Compellent product, VxRail product. We just happen to be one more swim lane in that sense. The thing is that, if they can sort that out, the partnership will get sorted out automatically. They are expecting the market forces to basically create a pull for the different swim lanes saying, 'There'll be people who like to buy #VxBlock, people who like to buy a VNX midrange product, people who like to buy VxRail, and people who love #XC because they love @Nutanix .'

Why is Nutanix adopting a software-centric strategy?

One of the good things about Nutnaix is how we continue to expand our TAM. … When we went and gave our software to OEM partners -- first Dell, then Lenovo, then finally IBM -- we said, 'Let them go and build different reference designs based on our software, and let that thing compete with the marketplace with our own NX appliance.' Then about 12 to 18 months ago, we started doing these ELA's which is like software consumed at scale. With some of the very large customers we had, we said, 'Let's have them completely decouple hardware consumption with software.' They were saying, 'Software appreciates, hardware depreciates. I want to get our business going with you where I can buy all the software and get all the discounting up front, and then I can go buy hardware overtime.' It was all about access. How do we make access to Nutnaix technology frictionless?

So what is Nutanix's new software-centric vision?

This decision to now go all software is basically the next step in that same direction around frictionless access. We announced Xi [Cloud Services] which is about, 'You can now control Nutanix with cloud services as well. You're not going to take sides between on-premise and off-premise, with owning and renting. So if you want to continue to own Nutanix, you can now download it from a website and install it on a server that we didn't ship to you, kick the tires on it, and then come back if you really want to consume this thing.' So it's about increasing the access to our technology in the most friction-free manner.

Does this software strategy expand your total addressable market (TAM)?

It absolutely expands our TAM. It takes a lot of these analyst forecast that say, 'Oh [hyper-converged] is actually a $2 billion industry. Now it's a $4 billion industry. Now it's $8 billion' – it's up to companies like us who are category creators to expand the TAM. TAM is what the leading category creator business says it is.

How will Nutanix partners make this transition?

They'll either go and implement a private cloud for the end customer, or they can be managed services providers where they take our software, buy the hardware, take some risk along the way, but be that cloud provider. When they go and take the software and implement the private cloud to the customer, they are now using the professional services to put together a solution rather than just resell boxes.

The other thing is it is a recurring business because if they go and sell software upfront, customers will want to consume that software, but they want to buy hardware over time. Every time they want to go and consume that software, they will be a level of professional services involved and that is where the channel keeps coming back.

There's been many hyper-converged acquisitions in 2017. Will Nutanix will remain independent?

A lot of this it is the DNA of a company. What does independence really mean? It means staying power to go and optimize for the long-time as opposed to just optimizing for the short term. Staying power is based on long-term greed. So, do you have long-term greed or short-term greed? It's tied to two other things: ambition, which fuels long-term greed; and attention to detail, which is, 'Can you do this without burning too much cash? And can you do this with an awesome customer experience where customers love you and nothing else matters?'

So if we were to have some long-term greed, which is fueled by the ambition of the company – and the ambition has to tie back to product strategy, the adjacency of our market and the fact that we continue to expand the total addressable market – that is long-term greed. Tie that with attention to detail, I think you have a recipe for staying power. That's all we look at.

http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/virtualization/300096761/nutanix-ceo-on-ciscos-hardware-problem-dells-dual-hyper-converged-strategy-and-why-he-doesnt-view-hpe-simplivity-as-a-competitor.htm

Less than 6 months after its IPO, storage firm Tintri considers selling ou

Less than six months after going public, storage firm Tintri Inc. today said it’s considering a sale of the company following a second straight quarter of disappointing results. In a surprise move, the Mountain View, California-based company said during its third-fiscal-quarter earnings conference call that it’s looking at a potential sale or options to reduce its cash burn significantly. “We are exploring strategic options available to the company to deliver value to our stockholders, including retaining investment bank advisors to assist us in this process and optimizing our operating model to reduce our cash burn rate and shorten the time to generate positive cash flow,” Chairman and Chief Executive Ken Klein said in a statement. Shares of Tintri plunged as much as 14 percent in after-hours trading, though later after the earnings call, shares were up 0.36 percent. They had fallen by the same fraction in regular trading, to $5.48 a share. After another disappointing quarter reported in September, shares had plummeted 13 percent. The nine-year-old company makes storage appliances using all flash-memory chips. They’re intended for virtual machines, or computers emulated in software, and software containers, which bundle an application and other software so it can run on multiple computer operating systems as needed. Both are ways to save money and provide more flexible data center setups in the rapidly developing cloud computing era. In its quarter ended Oct. 31, Tintri reported revenue fell 6 percent from a year ago, to $31.8 million. That was far below the $36.6 million analysts on average had forecast. The company also lost $37.9 million, or $1.21 a share, higher than the loss of $23.8 million, or $6.87 a share, a year ago. The adjusted loss, not including certain costs such as stock compensation, was 79 cents a share. For the fourth quarter, Tintri forecast an adjusted loss of 79 to 83 cents on revenue of $25 million to $27 million. Analysts were modeling 68-cent loss on revenue of $42.9 million. Klein blamed the shortfalls on delayed and reduced purchases by some accounts, though he added that some of those delayed transactions closed in November. During the earnings call, oddly, analysts didn’t ask about the potential sale of the company, but they did have many questions about sales momentum. “Many of the purchase delays that we’ve seen stem primary from concerns about the strength of our balance sheet, which we are addressing, and to a lesser extent realignment of our sales force, which naturally takes some time,” Klein said, adding that the main shortfalls in revenue came from midsized customers who have bought between $400,000 and $1 million worth of products. “We believe that our model can be fully funded through cash generation.” Klein also emphasized that Tintri continued to gain customers, adding 77 to top 1,500 total. He also cited several instances in which he said @Tintri beat out competitors such as @NetApp Inc., @Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.’s @Nimble Storage unit and @Dell EMC. Analysts and investors were downbeat on Tintri even before its IPO, though it’s unusual for a company to consider selling out so soon after going public. The company faces heightened competition from both traditional storage companies and younger upstarts, many of which are rapidly consolidating into bigger entities. For one, NetApp Inc. acquired all-flash storage provider SolidFire in early 2016. Then there was Dell Inc.’s massive acquisition of EMC Corp. that closed in September 2016. In February, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co. acquired SimpliVity Corp., a developer of competing hyperconverged systems. And in April, HPE struck another blow by buying Nimble Storage Inc., another all-flash storage provider, for more than $1 billion. Tintri had raised $61 million in its IPO June 30, but the $7-a-share price at which it debuted, down from its planned range of $10.50 to $12.50 a share, gave it a valuation of only $216 million. That was far below the $785 million valuation in its last venture capital round in July 2015. At the time, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Kieran Harty told Fortune explained the so-so reaction of investors to other enterprise infrastructure companies that weren’t doing that well. “It is kind of like being in a good house in a bad neighborhood,” he said. Before the IPO, Tintri had raised more than $260 million, including a $75 million round in early 2014, a $125 million funding in August 2015 and a secondary round of an undisclosed amount in January.

http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/Swisscom-Enterprise-Service-Cloud-Leverages-VMware-Cloud-Infrastructure-and-Management-to-Accelerate-Time-To-Market-1011205259

The 10 Coolest Hyper-Converged Products Of 2017

Dell EMC VxRail

@Dell EMC's #VxRail is selling at a blistering pace since it began shipping with the latest version of the company's venerable #PowerEdge server late this summer. The company says the VxRail appliance offers the flexibility for customers to choose the performance, capacity and graphics capabilities that best fit their needs, as well as significantly lower installation and upgrade costs and total cost of ownership compared to competing solutions. The latest version of VxRail, VxRail 4.5, includes automation and lifecycle management for @VMware #vSAN and #vShpere. VxRail is co-designed and built with VMware and is offered in five configurations for general purpose to storage-dense and high-performance uses.

http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/virtualization/300096631/the-10-coolest-hyper-converged-products-of-2017.htm/pgno/0/2

Like its CEO, HPE storage in transition phase

@MegWhitman says it’s time for “a new generation” to take over @Hewlett Packard Enterprise ( #HPE ). She was talking about the CEO change when she made that comment during the company’s earnings call last week, but she could have been talking about the HPE storage portfolio as well.

Independent of the CEO switch from Whitman to @AntonioNeri that will take place in February, the HPE storage technology focus is shifting from @3PAR arrays to @Nimble Storage. The #3PAR arrays still generate most of HPE’s storage revenue but #Nimble is growing much faster in revenue and influence inside the company.

HPE acquired Nimble for $1.2 billion last March. Whitman said the Nimble deal “completed our storage offering from entry-level to the high-end and accelerated our transition to all flash.”

The transition is ongoing. HPE storage revenue of $871 million last quarter grew only five percent over last year, a disappointing number for the vendor considering the 2016 results did not include Nimble. But Whitman said Nimble revenue increased 80%, while 3PAR sales were “soft.”

She blamed 3PAR problems on “a tough competitive environment in the mid-range and some go-to-market challenges in America.”

HPE hasn’t given up on 3PAR, and is working on changes to give the platform new life and bolster its sales team. But those changes rely on Nimble.

They include porting Nimble’s InfoSightpredictive storage analytics across all PAR arrays. “This is going to be a game-changer for our storage business,” Whitman said. “Leveraging advanced machine learning, HPE InfoSight is the next step in our vision for an autonomous data center.”

HPE is also combining the 3PAR and Nimble sales teams under Keegan Riley, who led Nimble sales before the acquisition. Riley, who worked in Hewlett Packard storage from 2008-2012, is the VP and GM of HPE’s North America Storage Business Unit. Whitman said the HPE storage unit is also hiring more field specialists to support sales.

All-flash revenue increased 16% from last year, which pales compared to HEP’s 30% year-over-year all-flash growth in the previous quarter. Both Nimble and 3PAR storage includes all-flash and hybrid arrays.

HPE gave no results for its other 2017 storage-related acquisition, SimpliVity.Whitman several times mentioned SimpliVity among HPE’s significant acquisitions but did not break out any hyper-converged results.

When asked if the HPE storage platform needed to grow by picking up new products, Whitman said HPE would be “very disciplined” about acquisitions.

“If we found something that we thought was important in the storage business … and it was priced right, we might think about doing it,” she said. “And I promise you that Antonio and [CFO] Tim [Stonesifer] will continue that disciplined approach to acquisitions. And I will be on the board to make sure they do.”

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/blog/Storage-Soup/Like-its-CEO-HPE-storage-in-transition-phase

Hyper Converged Infrastructure Market Report 2017- Nutanix, Simplivity, Pivot3, Atlantis Computing, Dell EMC

Apex Research, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Hyper Converged Infrastructure Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360° analysis of "Hyper Converged Infrastructure Market" from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global Hyper Converged Infrastructure industry, and estimates the future trend of Hyper Converged Infrastructure market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Hyper Converged Infrastructure Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.  Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here: goo.gl/UjXSKK Top Manufacturers Analysis of This Report @Nutanix @Simplivity @Pivot3 @Atlantis Computing @Dell EMC @Stratoscale @VMWare @Cisco Systems @Scale Computing @Nimboxx @Huawei Technologies The market research report explores the #HyperConvergedInfrastructure market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Hyper Converged Infrastructure Market". The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Hyper Converged Infrastructure market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Hyper Converged Infrastructure. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Hyper Converged Infrastructure market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report. The competitive landscape of the global market for Hyper Converged Infrastructure is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Hyper Converged Infrastructure market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Hyper Converged Infrastructure market globally. Enquire Before Buying @ goo.gl/HiJSgi The worldwide Hyper Converged Infrastructure market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Hyper Converged Infrastructure production volume, data pertaining to demand and Hyper Converged Infrastructure supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Hyper Converged Infrastructure along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Hyper Converged Infrastructure across the world. About Us “Apex Market Reports” offers elevating market research globally. We have collection of various syndicated reports of different categories. “Apex Market Reports” provides you to best services, weather you’re searching for new trends in market or competitive scenario in emerging market. Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.
https://www.openpr.com/news/818402/Hyper-Converged-Infrastructure-Market-Report-2017-Nutanix-Simplivity-Pivot3-Atlantis-Computing-Dell-EMC.html

Former SimpliVity Channel Chief George Hope To Drive SimpliVity, Nimble Sales Growth In New HPE Role

Hope, who joined @Hewlett  after the $28 billion enterprise computing giant acquired @SimpliVity for $650 million last year, will be responsible for all global distribution relationships reporting to new HPE Global Channel Chief Paul Hunter. Hope, who joined SimpliVity in January 2014, led the sales charge during a period of explosive growth at the #hyperconverged storage startup. Partners said Hope's success building a strong partner network at SimpliVity along with his 17-year track-record as a seasoned channel executive at @EMC would be a big advantage as HPE moves to ramp up SimpliVity and @Nimble sales growth through distribution. Before taking the global channels job at SimpliVity, Hope spent three years as director of channels sales for the U.S. for EMC and several years as senior director of global channels for EMC's Isilon network-attached storage division. HPE has pledged to drive 100 percent of the sales of SimpliVity and Nimble through partners. That promise is already paying off in a stepped-up sales charge from partners on the hyper-converged and all-flash storage offerings. Michael Goldstein, CEO of LAN Infotech, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla. solution provider, said Hope's enterprise channel leadership will be key to driving sales growth through distributors working hand in hand with partners on new emerging technologies. "I expect Hope to really help make the SimpliVity and Nimble acquisitions successful," said Goldstein. "This is an area of big growth for partners, but you need someone with channel expertise in these higher-end products to help partners move to an architecture sale that will generate services and consulting dollars. HPE spent a bundle on Nimble and SimpliVity, and they really need to make sure they back it up with the right channel strategy. Distribution is a big part of that." Hunter, for his part, recently told CRN that he has his sights set on big channel sales growth from the SimpliVity and Nimble acquisitions."If we are able to do with SimpliVity and Nimble what we have done with Aruba that is huge," Hunter said. "The Aruba business has grown by $1.5 billion in two to three years. If you are able to achieve similar growth with Nimble and SimpliVity and apply it to our channel that is huge."

http://m.crn.com/news/storage/300095556/former-simplivity-channel-chief-george-hope-to-drive-simplivity-nimble-sales-growth-in-new-hpe-role.htm

HPE SimpliVity Is Hyper-Simplicity

@HPE's new @SimpliVity 380 combines a hardware add-in board and the industry-leading #HPE #ProLiant #DL380 Gen9 into a #hyperconverged workhorse that delivers both #performance and #simplicity in spades. One of the key differentiators made by a large majority of the new wave of IT innovators is in how they bring simplicity to the complexities of the legacy #datacenter. With the acquisition of SimpliVity earlier this year, HPE proceeded to deliver a rebranded version of their technology in short order. In fact, they did it by shipping the first HPE branded SimpliVity product just 73 days after the acquisition closed. HPE recently provided us with a hands-on look of the new HPE SimpliVity 380 at their Boston facilities. HPE describes the architecture of the SimpliVity Data Virtualization Platform as "a globally aware file system and object store with data optimization techniques and data services." Always-on data deduplication and compression in HPE SimpliVity 380 design enables consistent performance across the board. The total solution combines a hardware add-in board and the industry-leading HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 into a hyper-converged workhorse. Simplification alone is great, but if it comes at the cost of performance it probably won't get a hearing in most IT organizations today. The HPE SimpliVity 380 delivers both and does so in spades. In-line deduplication reduces the overall amount of I/O required to store data on disk, while compression reduces the size of the data blocks that must be written to disk, further reducing the I/O bandwidth. Couple this with the HPE OmniStack software and you have a fully integrated solution to handle any VMware vSphere workload. Hardware Special Sauce The founders of SimpliVity saw an opportunity from the early days of the company to deliver a product that combines hardware and software running on x86 servers. On the hardware side the special sauce was a PCIe device, now called the HPE OmniStack accelerator card, that offloaded the compression and deduplication functions in much the same way as TCP offload devices accelerate network traffic. This approach takes a significant amount of the computation burden off the primary host CPU and reduces the amount of I/O operations required. The HPE SimpliVity 380 uses a globally aware file system and an object store to write the compressed and deduplicated data to disk. This architecture adds a layer of abstraction on top of the underlying hardware and makes it possible to create time-based copies. It also facilitates moving VMs and data from one system to another anywhere in the world. Full details of the HPE SimpliVity 380 architecture is described in this HPE white paper. Choices abound for the basic HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 platform with a wide range of disk, processor, memory and networking options. HPE recommends minimum configurations to include at least 256 GB of memory and two nodes in order to realize all the benefits of high availability. Three options for an all-flash deployment provide 9.6, 17.28 and 23.04 TB of capacity, respectively. Processor options start with the 8-core Intel E5-2620v4 and go up to the 22-core E5-2699v4. Memory is expandable up to 1.536 TB using 64 GB DIMMs. HPE SimpliVity 380 Software Integration At the software management level Simplivity made a conscious decision to integrate with the VMware vCenter Server product. This design plays to the large population of system administrators already familiar with VMware and the management of their virtual infrastructure. The current version supports vCenter 6.0 and 6.5. HPE SimpliVity 380 - Figure 1 (Click for larger image) Following the simplicity theme, SimpliVity made common practices like the cloning of VMs a simple two-click operation (see Figure 1). While some basic assumptions, such as the target datastore and host based on the original VM, may restrict this to a reduced number of situations, it does meet the need of the vast majority of clone operations. HPE SimpliVity 380 - Figure 2 (Click for larger image) At the top level, the HPE SimpliVity vCenter plugin provides a dashboard (see Figure 2) showing the uncompressed and non-deduped data along with the overall savings delivered by both techniques. Figure 3 shows the Search Backups dialog, which provides a way to quickly filter a large backup repository to find the file of interest based on multiple query fields. HPE SimpliVity 380 - Figure 3 (Click for larger image) It's also important to point out here that SimpliVity uses backups where other solutions might use a snapshot. Figure 4 shows the backup dialog including the restore files option, providing access to individual files within a backup. HPE SimpliVity 380 - Figure 4 (Click for larger image) Bottom Line HPE offers twenty-five pre-configured SKUs for the SimpliVity 380 product, starting out at $26K. It's also possible to customize your HPE 380 based on specific needs. At this point in time the HPE SimpliVity 380 management happens using the vCenter plug-in. Integration with HPE's OneView product would be an obvious next step but hasn't been officially announced. Comparisons to other products like VMware VSAN are difficult at best due to the totally different architecture and implementation of the two offerings. The HPE Simplivity 380 requires only two nodes for full high availability and data protection while a typical VSAN deployment requires three nodes. It is possible to operate a VSAN cluster with only two nodes, but it's not the recommended method. HPE also offers their StoreVirtual VSA product as a software-only alternative, but you wouldn't get the benefits of the OmniStack accelerator card. Paul Ferrill, based in Chelsea, Alabama, has been writing about computers and software for almost 20 years. He has programmed in more languages than he cares to count, but now leans toward Visual Basic and C#.

https://mobile.serverwatch.com/server-reviews/hpe-simplivity-is-hyper-simplicity.html

Why HPE No Longer Wants to Sell Cheap Servers to Cloud Giants

The recent decision by @Hewlett Packard Enterprise to stop selling commodity servers to companies that operate the world’s biggest cloud platforms and focus its efforts on selling hardware and services to smaller cloud companies, other types of service providers, and enterprises is a smart strategy, industry analysts say. With commodity servers, “there is no money to be made in the Super 7 cloud providers, [but] the tier 2 market is the fastest growing [portion], percentwise, of the cloud market,” said Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst of Moor Insights & Strategy. Companies that make up the “Super 7” (an Intel expression) are Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Alibaba, and Tencent. Related: Taiwanese Firms to Sell Latest NVIDIA AI Hardware to Cloud Giants HPE this month announced it is exiting the business of selling commodity Cloudline servers to these companies, also often referred to as tier 1 service providers. But it will continue selling its higher-margin products, including high-end Apollo servers, 3PAR storage systems, and networking equipment to these large providers, a company spokesperson said. The company will continue selling a standardized set of Cloudline servers to smaller cloud companies and service providers, such as Salesforce and eBay. “We are shifting our resources and doubling down on tier 2 and tier 3 providers,” the spokesperson said. Related: HPE Says Storage, Networking Gear Sales Rising Industry analysts say HPE’s decision to abandon the hyper-scale commodity server business is a sound strategy, because the vendor is no longer getting a return on investment from its partnership with original design manufacturer (ODM) Foxconn, which built the custom commodity servers for HPE. HPE and Dell used to sell a lot of servers to the tier 1 providers, Moorhead said. But in recent years, their sales have plummeted, as cloud providers began designing their own servers and buying them directly from Asian ODMs – the likes of Foxconn. HPE partnered with Foxconn in 2014 to get a piece of the action, analysts say. But earlier this year, HPE chief executive Meg Whitman said her company faced significantly lower demand for the commodity servers from one tier 1 customer, which was reportedly Microsoft. The heavy competition from Asian ODMs has forced traditional server vendors, such as HPE and Dell EMC to decide how best to serve these customers or walk away entirely from the low-margin business, said Jeffrey Fidacaro, senior analyst of data center technologies at 451 Research. While HPE is pulling out of the hyper-scale custom commodity server market, Dell has no plans to do so anytime soon, said Ravi Pendekanti, senior VP of server solutions, product management and product marketing, at Dell EMC. “We continue to ship and keep our customers happy,” he said, responding to a question about Dell’s plans in selling hardware to the biggest cloud companies. Aiming at Smaller Providers The smaller providers don’t have the staff to design their own hardware and service it in their data centers like the hyper-scalers do, so they need the hardware and services OEMs like HPE provide, Fidacaro said. The same goes for enterprises. “For second- and third-tier service providers, colocation companies that aren’t very large, and enterprises, the services ecosystem that includes design, procurement, testing, and validation is still important,” Fidacaro said. “It’s something they can’t replicate internally because they don’t have the resources. This is where HPE can offer a lot of value.” Ashish Nadkarni, IDC’s program director of computing platforms, said HPE’s move resolves the awkwardness of having Foxconn build its custom commodity servers while competing with the ODM for the same business. The move is also part of HPE’s continuing effort to focus on higher-margin businesses, he said. Last year, HPE spun off and merged its non-core software with Micro Focus in a deal worth $8.8 billion. “It cleans up their business model,” he said. “HPE is shedding all the low-margin products and becoming more streamlined and nimble and only focusing on areas where it can make money.” For example, the company in 2017 has beefed up its product portfolio and now offers customers hyper-converged infrastructure, technology it gained through its SimpliVity acquisition in January, and flash storage hardware gained through its Nimble Storage acquisition in March. HPE can bolster revenue through its broad portfolio of products for smaller providers and enterprises, Nadkarni said. “There is money to be made with the whole solution.” HPE is a member of the Open Compute Project, the organization through which Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and others open source custom specs and have suppliers compete among each other for large orders of data center hardware. An HPE spokesman didn’t immediately respond when asked whether the company plans to stay in the organization. Moorhead, however, still sees value in HPE staying put. “I still see the value of HPE’s continued participation in OCP, as it can drive specifications for Cloudline, [which is] very much still an entity in tier 2 providers,” Moorhead said.

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/hardware/why-hpe-no-longer-wants-sell-cheap-servers-cloud-giants

Comparing Top Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Solutions: the 2017 Edition

I love working with #converged ( #CI) and #hyperconverged ( #HCI) infrastructure technologies. These types of #datacenter systems @DELLEMC @Hewlett @Scale @Nutanix @Simplivity @Cisco @VMware etc have allowed administrators from all sorts of environments realize some big benefits when it comes to optimization and architecture. First, it’s important to define and understand HCI and note that there are numerous similarities between HCI and CI environments. Both are deployed as blocks, and both converge critical resources to deliver higher levels of density. However, the biggest difference comes in how these environments are managed. In HCI, the management layer (storage for example) is controlled at the virtual layer. Specifically, HCI incorporates a virtual appliance that runs within the cluster. This virtual controller runs on each node within the cluster to ensure better failover capabilities, resiliency, and uptime.

Benefits of hyper-converged infrastructure include:

Integrated VDI, convergence, and hypervisor managementRapid-scale deployment of VMs and applicationsSmaller data center footprintGreater levels of application, desktop, and user densitiesDirect integration with the software layerCreation of hyper-scale capabilitiesLeveraging all-flash systemsIntegration with cloud systemsIncreased capabilities around resiliency, business continuity, and disaster recovery 

HCI is a quickly growing market. According to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Converged Systems Tracker, worldwide converged systems vendor revenues increased 6.2 percent year over year to $3.15 billion during the second quarter of 2017. The market consumed 1.78 exabytes of new storage capacity during the quarter, which was up 5.6 percent compared to the same period a year ago.

Related: Can Windows Server Make Hyper-Converged Infrastructure a Boring Commodity?

"The converged systems market is benefiting from an expansion into new environments and a new set of customers," said Eric Sheppard, research director, Enterprise Storage & Converged Systems. "This expansion is driven by products that are offering new levels of automation, tighter integration between technologies, and, in many cases, software-defined solutions based on scale-out architectures."

What’s Changed?

IDC’s numbers indicate that Dell EMC has taken the top spot when it comes to hyper-converged infrastructure. However, it needs to be noted that the Dell EMC XC appliances are powered by Nutanix software, which is arguably the engine that’s driving a lot of that growth. Also, let’s not forget that Nutanix sells its own hyper-converged infrastructure appliances too.

Here’s an overview of the top players in hyper-converged infrastructure and their solutions:

Cisco HyperFlex

In April of last year, I wrote a post about what HyperFlex was and wasn’t good at. Well, at version 2.5, I can honestly say that HyperFlex has come a long way. First of all, HyperFlex Connect, a standalone HTML5 interface for the management and orchestration of HyperFlex from any device, makes management way simpler. Connect acts as an extensible interface that is hypervisor agnostic and has built-in automation with RESTful API.

They also added higher-capacity all-flash nodes, which are now coupled with their 40-Gbps USC fabric. All of this translates to big performance enhancements, more density, better VDI multi-tenancy, and optimized resource controls. Another big add was native replication of clusters. This helps protect data and applications. HyperFlex now also includes data-at-rest security options using self-encrypting drives.

Cisco

Finally, remember that CLiQr acquisition? We’re seeing even deeper integration with Cisco CloudCenter and HyperFlex. That being said, integration with existing Cisco systems has been made much easier as well. That is, working with existing UCS domains and incorporating HyperFlex has been greatly simplified. So, if you’re a Cisco shop that wants to support remote office or leverage Cisco’s hyper-converged infrastructure, HyperFlex is a great option!

HPE (SimpliVity)

HPE has been in the CI space for quite some time. However, they became a real HCI player with the 2017 acquisition of SimpliVity. In its own space, SimpliVity was a solid product, going head-to-head with Nutanix. Starting out in 2009, they quickly gained more than a thousand partners with customers worldwide. They had some very cool innovation keys to success, which HPE is leveraging.

What is now called the “HPE” OmniStack Data Accelerator Card performs inline deduplication, compression, and data optimization across primary and backup storage repositories, offloading this processing so VMs suffer no performance penalty. As per HPE SimpliVity, the median data efficiency is rate 40:1.

HPE

From there, HPE SimpliVity Data Virtualization Platform operates as a virtual controller on vSphere ESXi and abstracts data from the underlying hardware. Designed for a bunch of use cases, the HPE SimpliVity 380 HCI architecture is a solid option for organizations looking to support remote office or new virtualization deployments.

Dell EMC

We’re seeing some real muscle-flexing from Dell EMC (and VMware). At the last VMworld, Dell EMC and VMware announced two joint solutions, VxRail 4.5 and VxRack. In its newest version, VxRail 4.5 includes automation and lifecycle management for VMware’s vSAN and vSphere. The really cool part here is that upgrading and patching software is now highly automated. This helps reduce configuration errors and allow admins to focus on more valuable operations. This level of automation is awesome for DevOps, higher levels of scale, and fast deployments.

Updates also include multi-node scaling, which automates the scaling of a single VxRail appliance to multi-node environments. Finally, you’ll see some cool updates around REST-based APIs for programmatic lifecycle management. You can now manage a single appliance or entire clusters.

I didn’t forget about VxRack, the beefier version of VxRail. At VMworld we saw improved capabilities around a self-contained system via integration with VMware Cloud Foundation for simplified management of VMware vSphere 6.5, vSAN 6.6, and the network virtualization product NSX 6.3.

Dell EMC

The other cool part here is the hybrid cloud option. You can now run Dell EMC’s Enterprise Hybrid Cloud (EHC) on top of VxRack. When it comes to Dell EMC, whether you’re a smaller shop or a large data center, there are options for use cases here. Plus, deep integration with your underlying VMware environment make, this tech a must when examining HCI.

Nutanix

I’d call Nutanix of the original companies behind the hyper-converged infrastructure revolution. And, they’re still here and making waves. The Acropolis Operating System (AOS), formerly known as the Nutanix Operating System, has continued to see updates and improvements. Their recent 5.1 release allows customers to add performance to their clusters simply by increasing their SSD tier for example. This is accomplished by adding an all-flash node to an existing hybrid cluster, and the new SSDs are seamlessly added to existing storage containers.

Furthermore, instead of doing forklift migrations from hybrid systems to all-flash systems, users can add all-flash nodes to existing clusters and retire their older hybrid gear.

In 5.1, we also saw capacity optimization improvements. According to Nutanix, the erasure coding algorithm is more intelligent in 5.1, where every time a node gets added new EC strips or existing EC strips on writes will automatically take advantage of the new nodes. This functionality improves capacity utilization across while still maintaining the same protection levels as the cluster grows and shrinks.

Nutanix

Another really cool function has been the further enhancement around containerization. In 5.0 we saw some cool support for things like Docker. In 5.1 we see even deeper integration with the Acropolis Container Services.

Another cool addition is general availability for support of XenServer. This helps further support workloads like XenApp, XenDesktop, and virtual NetScaler appliances.

Overall, Nutanix is an absolute leader in the hyper-converged infrastructure space. However, their strength isn’t just in the hardware. Their software architecture around AOS is truly impressive. Nutanix should be a consideration in almost any HCI scenario.

Scale Computing

Staring out in 2007, Scale Computing is one of the last standalone HCI vendors on the market. With thousands of customers and deployments, this is a mature solution offering serious benefits to the customer. The new HC3 architecture has big improvements around storage deduplication, multi-cluster remote management, disaster recovery capabilities, and even user management. Plus, HC3 allows you to deploy single appliances – instead of the previously required minimum of three. You’d still want a cluster for HA and primary production systems, but if you’re a smaller business and have no need for all that extra horsepower, the single appliance will work for you.

Scale has also done a solid job getting into the automation space. They’ve created an automated an intelligent mechanism to allocate storage across the tiers. According to the company, this tuning capacity allows you to increase the allocation of flash for workloads that have higher I/O requirements while decreasing the allocation for virtual disks and workloads that have minimal I/O needs. I’ve always been a fan of Scale Computing. If you’re looking to support smaller offices and are on a budget (but still want awesome tech), look to Scale as a solid option.

Scale Computing

Let’s be clear -- I know this isn’t the full list of hyper-converged infrastructure vendors. Plus, there are going to be more hardware vendors supporting CI using software (like Pivot3 or Nutanix OEM) to deliver HCI solutions. Lenovo is a great example of that. Furthermore, we’re seeing a broadening market around whitebox integration with HCI software options. Whichever way you approach it, the HCI landscape continues to change and evolve.

Goodbye Atlantis Computing; Hello Hive-IO

Atlantis computing has been in the market for a long time. If you’ve worked with virtualization technologies (XenAppp and XenDesktop in particular) you’ll know about Atlantis. They came to market with their ILIO products and then further impacted the industry with USX. Then, they released their Hyperscale HCI appliance and attempted to enter a very volatile market. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Its concepts behind hyper-scale were actually really awesome, but there were challenges with the hardware, where it could be deployed, and issues with the deployment itself.

And so, Atlantis Computing’s assets were sold to Hive-IO, a young software-defined focused organization. According to Hive-IO, they’ll continue to support all of Atlantis products and work to retain its essence and technology to help expand Hive-IO's storage offering to include intelligent software-defined solutions. The focus will revolve around an area which both Hive-IO and Atlantis know very well: VDI.

Final Thoughts

Over the past few quarters, I can honestly say that CI and HCI have dominated a lot of the projects we’ve been working on. We’ve seen use cases in healthcare, government, pharma, education, manufacturing, and other verticals. Furthermore, we’re seeing growth in how HCI is being deployed within remote and branch locations.

For HCI to be successful, make sure you know your use case and where you’re deploying the environment. Do your best to reduce complexity and fragmentation by leveraging hyper-converged infrastructure systems that easily integrate with existing data center and virtualization components. Finally, I always recommend testing these systems out. Deploying HCI in parallel with your existing environment can help you better understand utilization, best practices, and where the design can positively impact your specific requirements.

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/hyper-convergence/comparing-top-hyper-converged-infrastructure-solutions-2017-edition

HPE intros new infrastructure products for SMBs

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is introducing enhancements to its flash storage, server, hyperconverged and networking products as well as its financing programs for small and midsize businesses. Ten mistakes to avoid when working with tech partners Third-party tech partners can help your business reach its goals, but certain behaviors should be avoided when seeking out and managing those relationships. Read More Within its flash portfolio, updates include revamped #HPE #MSA and HPE #Nimble Storage flash arrays, and a lower priced all-flash HPE #SimpliVity 380 Gen 10 hyperconverged system. The company also added new storage switch for Ethernet-based storage network connectivity. On the server side, HPE said it has refreshed its ProLiant series for improved performance, price, and versatility. HPE has also introduced a new Wi-Fi product for businesses with fewer than 100 employees. The HPE OfficeConnect OC20 is described as cost-effective business-grade Wi-Fi for businesses without a dedicated IT department.  More broadly, HPE is catering more products to SMBs that may have been priced out of modern technologies like flash and software-defined storage. The products that are available, or affordable, tend to lack key features. HPE's aim is to step into that market gap and lock down a small business customer base that could help drive revenue in the long term. News broke last week that HPE was planning to cut around 10 percent of its global workforce, or about 5,000 employees. The company has been slimming down with multiple rounds of layoffs since it split with HP and CEO Meg Whitman took the helm in 2015. Earlier this month, HPE announced it had completed the sale of its software business.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/hpe-intros-new-infrastructure-products-for-smbs/

Global Hyperconverged Integrated System Market 2017 by Manufacturer - Nutanix, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Simplivity Corporation, Scale Computing

The Hyperconverged Integrated System Market gives complete overview of the market. It offers statistical data and market analysis by Type and Region. Market profit, loss, supply, demand, latest market trends and many more are introduced in the report. The future impacts on the global market are also discussed in the report. What our report offers: • Evaluation of the market by Applications • Product efficiency and use according to its Type • The judgments of the market such as constraints, different opportunities, challenges, policies, investment and future growth are included. • Tactical suggestion and proposals for the new beginners are discussed.  • The strategic recommendations are made according to the historical estimations. • Top companies’ profiles are detailed. Get Free Sample Report @ www.fiormarkets.com/report-detail/110475/request-sample Leading companies in the global #Hyperconverged Integrated System markets profiled in the report are: #Nutanix #HewlettPackardEnterprise #Simplivity Corporation #ScaleComputing, #VMware , Inc #NetAppInc, #CiscoSystems , Inc #OracleCorporation #FujitsuLimited, #Pivot3 #HuaweiTechnologies Co., Ltd. Further in the report: This report examines the Hyperconverged Integrated System industry through an analysis of the industry chain, policies, plans and segments the market according to the different regions. The position and size of the Hyperconverged Integrated System market in different regions are also included which helps in understating of the market positions. Further Hyperconverged Integrated System market analysis along with computable information, qualitative information sets and evaluation tools are introduced in this report. Top manufacturers and organization involved in the Hyperconverged Integrated System market are provided. Application Segment: Global Hyperconverged Integrated System Market: BFSI Cloud Service Providers Healthcare Government Hospitality
https://www.openpr.com/news/737412/Global-Hyperconverged-Integrated-System-Market-2017-by-Manufacturer-Nutanix-Hewlett-Packard-Enterprise-Simplivity-Corporation-Scale-Computing.html

19 Powerful Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Solutions: New Choices From A Narrowing Field Of Vendors

#HyperconvergedInfrastructure: Business Growing, But Industry Shakeout May Be Starting The hyper-converged infrastructure marking is one that is enjoying hyper growth. In June IDC estimated that sales of hyper-converged infrastructure offerings grew 64.7 percent annually during the first quarter of 2017 to reach $665.1 million. At the same time, the hyper-converged infrastructure market may be starting to consolidate. One of the key players, #SimpliVity, was acquired this year by #HewlettPackardEnterprise. And the technology of one of the up-and-comers in the hyper-converged infrastructure business, #Atlantis Computing, was in July acquired by #HiveIO, a New York-based developer of software-defined infrastructure technology. As the industry grows up, CRN here is highlighting 19 new offerings vendors in the space. These devices all integrate at least two IT resources – compute, storage or networking – along with unified management, and which can be used to run general purpose applications. To see what is available, turn the page.

Dell EMC VxRail Appliances

#DellEMC #VxRail appliances, built on Dell EMC #PowerEdge servers, are powered by #VMware #vSAN #softwaredefinedstorage platform and jointly engineered with VMware. VxRail supports a wide range of applications and workloads with single-call support, one-click user upgrades, and integration with existing VMware management solutions.

The latest VxRail appliances 4.5, unveiled in May, offers several new features aimed at simplifying installation and management, including enhanced enterprise deployment features, greater hardware flexibility, and improved interoperability with Dell EMC technologies. VxRail appliances support the latest VMware technologies, including vSphere 6.5 and vSAN 6.6, aimed at helping accelerate flash performance, protect against unauthorized access to data, and enhance protection for stretched clusters.

http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/data-center/300092461/19-powerful-hyper-converged-infrastructure-solutions-new-choices-from-a-narrowing-field-of-vendors.htm/pgno/0/4?itc=ticker

Meg Whitman Joins Board Of Directors At Dropbox, One Of HPE's Most Popular Data Center Success Stories

#HewlettPackardEnterprise CEO @MegWhitman is joining the board of directors at #Dropbox, the cloud file storage company announced Monday. Whitman, who had recently been a candidate for the Uber CEO position, "will help Dropbox reach new heights," company CEO Drew Houston wrote in a blog post. He said Whitman has been a "trusted friend and advisor to me for years." [Related: HPE CEO Whitman To Channel: I Have A Long-Term Commitment To HPE, Partners, And 'The Mission We Are On'] "Her experience and judgment will be invaluable to Dropbox as we continue to grow and scale," Houston wrote, citing her experience both with HPE and with scaling eBay as its CEO during its early years. San Francisco-based Dropbox has been valued at $10 billion since a funding round in 2014, and some reports have suggested that an initial public offering could be coming for the company by the end of the year. Dropbox has built out its cloud infrastructure with the help of HPE, and HPE is also a Dropbox customer, Houston noted in the blog post. In June 2016, Whitman highlighted a deal that saw Dropbox move some of its cloud storage services business from Amazon Web Services to an HPE cloud solution as a way to, the companies said, improve flexibility and save money. "What we see in Dropbox is potentially the beginning of a trend, which is once you get to a certain requirement, certain scale, certain compliance requirements, that actually being in the public cloud is not the answer to every question," Whitman told CRN in an interview at the time. Meanwhile, HPE has more than 100,000 employees using the Dropbox storage service. In his blog post, Houston wrote that discussions around Whitman "taking on a more official role" at Dropbox had begun earlier this year. In an interview with CRN this month, Whitman said she is firmly committed to leading HPE into the future. "I would like to underscore to partners that I have a long term commitment to HPE and to the partners and to the mission that we are on," Whitman told CRN. "Yes, I talked to Uber [about the CEO job] at the end of their process because it is a business model I am very familiar with. It reminds me of eBay [where Whitman was CEO from 1998 to 2008] in many ways. But it wasn't the right thing. I think HPE is very special in its own right." Whitman's pledge of long-term commitment to HPE came as the company delivered better-than-expected earnings results for its fiscal third quarter, ended July 31. That included an increase in core server sales of 13 percent, along with 200 percent growth in SimpliVity hyper-converged infrastructure sales and 30 percent growth in all-flash sales driven by Nimble.

http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/300091906/meg-whitman-joins-board-of-directors-at-dropbox-one-of-hpes-most-popular-data-center-success-stories.htm

Global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Market worth 12000+ Million USD by 2022, Covering Top Players – Nimboxx, Simplivity, Gridstore, Vmware, Maxta

Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is a marketing term to describe a fully software-defined IT infrastructure that virtualizes all of the elements of conventional ‘hardware-defined’ systems. HCI includes, at a minimum, virtualized computing (a Hypervisor), a virtualised SAN (software-defined storage) and virtualized networking (Software-defined networking). HCI typically runs on industry-standard Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) servers. The report on the global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Market is a complete overview of the market, covering various aspects product definition, segmentation based on various parameters, and the prevailing vendor landscape. The report also presents a round-up of vulnerabilities which companies operating in Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market must avoid in order to enjoy sustainable growth through the course of the forecast period.  This study provides an evaluation of aspects that are expected to impact growth of market in an undesired or constructive method. The research study further presents the past performance of the global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market, coupled with the statistics from 2017 to 2022 on the basis of volume and revenue. This research report on Hyper-Converged Infrastructure provides detailed analysis on the main growth prospects and challenges in the market. Download PDF Sample Copy: https://www.researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=151818 The report on Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market is a source of expansive ideas, statistical data, and detailed information, which has the potency to ensure profit of an enterprises. The research report additionally addresses some of the very important questions regarding the development and latest trends in the global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market. Key Questions this study will answer: -What are the current trends, challenges, and drivers for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure in APAC? What will be the most promising Growth Opportunities and key investment areas over the next five years? -Are the currently available solutions and vendors adequately meeting market needs? What are the gaps, if any? Are there any early market movers in this direction? -What will be the impact and adoption of new technologies? How will these change current industry paradigms and / or bring in new business models? -How expectations from vendors changing and what are some emerging vendor selection criteria? The modest scenario amongst the top players in the global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market has been studied through the market share evaluation within the competitive landscape section of the report. The top strategies adopted by the chief players operating in the market for better business into the global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market have also been included under this study. Key #HyperConvergedInfrastructure market Players: #Vmware #Nutanix #Simplivity #ScaleComputing #Pivot3 #Maxta #Nimboxx #CiscoSystems #Gridstore #HewlettPackardEnterprise Inquiry for Buying This  An additional regional data of the key geographic segments with respect to Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market is explained in detail. This gives an idea about which region is leading in Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market helping make better future investment plan. This helps gain better idea about the spread of this particular market in respective regions.

http://www.satprnews.com/2017/09/09/global-hyper-converged-infrastructure-market-worth-12000-million-usd-by-2022-covering-top-players-nimboxx-simplivity-gridstore-vmware-maxta/