So, I now have been in front of 6 different senior IT audiences since Tuesday's announcement.
Note: this might give you a sense of how frequently I have the privilege of interacting with customers.
I've been able to present the case for VCE, focusing on Vblock and Acadia, and I"m starting to see a consistent pattern in the reaction -- at least so far.
Note: this might give you a sense of how frequently I have the privilege of interacting with customers.
I've been able to present the case for VCE, focusing on Vblock and Acadia, and I"m starting to see a consistent pattern in the reaction -- at least so far.
Thought I'd share it with you, because I think we're going to see more of this going forward.
The Basics
Admittedly, this is a small sample size, and it's skewed towards very large IT organizations in the financial sector, so please take all of this with a large grain of salt!
First, there's a surprisingly amount of common ground between the groups I've met with in the last 72 hours.
* no real debate that Intel-based architectures are preferred going forward, less interest in legacy RISC processors (i.e. SPARC, PowerPC, etc.). Also general agreement that workloads running on legacy UNIXes will have to go somewhere else before too long.
* no debate that the next target is VMware (specifically), running either Windows or Linux. No one has been serious about alternative hypervisors for quite some time, at least with the people I talk to.
* no debate about the end-state, severely challenged on how to get there sooner than later.
How Vblock Changes The Discussion
So, when these people saw what VCE was doing with Vblock, the discussion changed considerably.
They realized that they had invested an enormous amount of effort in selecting best-of-breed (usually the kit from those three companies, BTW!), integrating it, supporting it, etc. -- and was generally producing less-than-ideal results, at least compared to what we were able to show them.
They could clearly see how we had come up with far better results that they hadn't been able to achieve, and do so at no incremental cost to them.
Yes, they couldn't freely roam the technology aisles at the vendor supermarket as they had in the past, but -- on the whole -- they felt that was a more-than-fair tradeoff. No voiced concerns about lock-in, as each vendor's product portfolio was perceived as relatively open, and the pieces all stood on their own merit.
They liked the integrated element management (EMC Ionix UIM) and broader next-gen operational models and consumption portals. Of course, alll of these people will want to drill down on the details at some point, but they openly said they liked what they saw.
So, How Do Three Companies Work Together?
As expected, the conversation would quickly shifted to seamless support between the three companies (done), aligned roadmaps (done), integration and validation (done) as well as "commercial terms" (code for purchase orders, licensing, maintenance, etc.).
That last bit has good framework in place, but it hasn't been seriously exercised just yet, which I shared with everyone. So please be patient with us on that piece?
All good. Several people were surprised to hear that the single support experience had largely been in place since mid August, and was already working well. Like I said, we've been working on this for a while.
And, after about 30 minutes, the discussion usually turned more serious.
Our Operational Model Has To Change, But How?
When you talk to the heads of truly large IT organizations, it's expected that the technology works as advertised, or will very soon. That's what big vendors do, especially the vendors of VCE: VMware, Cisco and EMC.
They quickly acknowledged that -- to really get the benefit of all this goodness -- the operational model had to change significantly -- from less of a traditional IT mindset, to more of an internal service provider.
And they all knew that their org charts were inherently resistant to change. Big IT can do a lot of things well, but changing their operational and organizational model quickly is not usually among their list of core competencies.
Well, we had plenty of great consultative services ready to go to help in the journey. But, even then, we were talking many months of organizational grinding just to get people less resistant to change, let alone accomplish anything substantial.
Which was a perfect way to introduce ...
Accelerating Change With Acadia
The appeal behind Acadia is simple.
Bring in the new, shiny tech -- and the new, shiny operational model, and point it a juicy piece of the landscape. Have Acadia build it, operationalize it, and run it for a while.
Compare the balanced scorecard of results of the new environment against the traditional IT landscape. You should expect dramatically different numbers around capex and opex -- not to mention delighted business users who can get what they want, when they want it -- and pay for what they use.
Use those new, shiny metrics to help the traditional IT organization to start thinking about things differently. Some will want to live in the new world, some will need a bit of encouragement, and others will resist with all their might.
But you'll likely get to a new collective mindset far faster if there's a demonstrated proof point on the floor, delivering demonstrably better results that the business wants to use.
The expectation would be -- over a reasonably short period of time -- they'll be strong interest in transferring operations back to the IT organization (the "T" in BOT -- build, operate, transfer) -- and you should be off to a fine start.
By the way, this could nicely complement the gradual introduction of technology into the landscape (virtualization, compute, storage, etc.) so that there would be a general technology readiness to flip big chunks of the environment into the new operational model when people were ready to start organizing, thinking and working more as a service provider, and less like traditional IT.
The Results
In four of the situations I participated in, there was a direct and forceful request for a proposal to go evaluate. And, could they have a copy of my slides? Of course.
The Conclusion So Far
Maybe this VCE + Vblock + Acadia thing isn't for everyone, but I've found at least one audience that thinks this is great -- large IT organizations, committed to virtualized environments at scale that want to get there sooner than later with great results.
Steve Duplessie has a fascinating take on all of this, definitely worth reading.
So far, so good.
Admittedly, this is a small sample size, and it's skewed towards very large IT organizations in the financial sector, so please take all of this with a large grain of salt!
First, there's a surprisingly amount of common ground between the groups I've met with in the last 72 hours.
* no real debate that Intel-based architectures are preferred going forward, less interest in legacy RISC processors (i.e. SPARC, PowerPC, etc.). Also general agreement that workloads running on legacy UNIXes will have to go somewhere else before too long.
* no debate that the next target is VMware (specifically), running either Windows or Linux. No one has been serious about alternative hypervisors for quite some time, at least with the people I talk to.
* no debate about the end-state, severely challenged on how to get there sooner than later.
How Vblock Changes The Discussion
So, when these people saw what VCE was doing with Vblock, the discussion changed considerably.
They realized that they had invested an enormous amount of effort in selecting best-of-breed (usually the kit from those three companies, BTW!), integrating it, supporting it, etc. -- and was generally producing less-than-ideal results, at least compared to what we were able to show them.
They could clearly see how we had come up with far better results that they hadn't been able to achieve, and do so at no incremental cost to them.
Yes, they couldn't freely roam the technology aisles at the vendor supermarket as they had in the past, but -- on the whole -- they felt that was a more-than-fair tradeoff. No voiced concerns about lock-in, as each vendor's product portfolio was perceived as relatively open, and the pieces all stood on their own merit.
They liked the integrated element management (EMC Ionix UIM) and broader next-gen operational models and consumption portals. Of course, alll of these people will want to drill down on the details at some point, but they openly said they liked what they saw.
So, How Do Three Companies Work Together?
As expected, the conversation would quickly shifted to seamless support between the three companies (done), aligned roadmaps (done), integration and validation (done) as well as "commercial terms" (code for purchase orders, licensing, maintenance, etc.).
That last bit has good framework in place, but it hasn't been seriously exercised just yet, which I shared with everyone. So please be patient with us on that piece?
All good. Several people were surprised to hear that the single support experience had largely been in place since mid August, and was already working well. Like I said, we've been working on this for a while.
And, after about 30 minutes, the discussion usually turned more serious.
Our Operational Model Has To Change, But How?
When you talk to the heads of truly large IT organizations, it's expected that the technology works as advertised, or will very soon. That's what big vendors do, especially the vendors of VCE: VMware, Cisco and EMC.
They quickly acknowledged that -- to really get the benefit of all this goodness -- the operational model had to change significantly -- from less of a traditional IT mindset, to more of an internal service provider.
And they all knew that their org charts were inherently resistant to change. Big IT can do a lot of things well, but changing their operational and organizational model quickly is not usually among their list of core competencies.
Well, we had plenty of great consultative services ready to go to help in the journey. But, even then, we were talking many months of organizational grinding just to get people less resistant to change, let alone accomplish anything substantial.
Which was a perfect way to introduce ...
Accelerating Change With Acadia
The appeal behind Acadia is simple.
Bring in the new, shiny tech -- and the new, shiny operational model, and point it a juicy piece of the landscape. Have Acadia build it, operationalize it, and run it for a while.
Compare the balanced scorecard of results of the new environment against the traditional IT landscape. You should expect dramatically different numbers around capex and opex -- not to mention delighted business users who can get what they want, when they want it -- and pay for what they use.
Use those new, shiny metrics to help the traditional IT organization to start thinking about things differently. Some will want to live in the new world, some will need a bit of encouragement, and others will resist with all their might.
But you'll likely get to a new collective mindset far faster if there's a demonstrated proof point on the floor, delivering demonstrably better results that the business wants to use.
The expectation would be -- over a reasonably short period of time -- they'll be strong interest in transferring operations back to the IT organization (the "T" in BOT -- build, operate, transfer) -- and you should be off to a fine start.
By the way, this could nicely complement the gradual introduction of technology into the landscape (virtualization, compute, storage, etc.) so that there would be a general technology readiness to flip big chunks of the environment into the new operational model when people were ready to start organizing, thinking and working more as a service provider, and less like traditional IT.
The Results
In four of the situations I participated in, there was a direct and forceful request for a proposal to go evaluate. And, could they have a copy of my slides? Of course.
However, I did push back a bit.
I said to make this really work well, we needed two things -- a clearly defined use case so that we didn't have to solve world hunger just to validate the approach, and an "expedited organizational interface" so we didn't get lost in the existing machinery and process.
Everyone understood the need for both.The Conclusion So Far
Maybe this VCE + Vblock + Acadia thing isn't for everyone, but I've found at least one audience that thinks this is great -- large IT organizations, committed to virtualized environments at scale that want to get there sooner than later with great results.
Steve Duplessie has a fascinating take on all of this, definitely worth reading.
So far, so good.
Hey Chuck,
Great article, sounds like you have really convinced yourself that VBlocks is the way forward.
I have been into a presentation of every major storage vendor joined with cisco and VMware and guess what. They all talk about how their strategies align. The storage is interchangeable in any cloud architecture. The Key criteria is around a proven methodology around Service Management.
I personally think to the common IT person,The company with the biggest marketing bucket will have a sizeable advantage as people tend to take alot of marketing propaganda seriously at face value. However, to the more astute Architect they will see VBlocks as another rehash from EMC in an attempt to mask its poor integration across its product lines by touting partnership with the 2 biggest players in virtualisation and networking.
Nexus and VMware will sell itself regardless of whichever vendor they are tied to from a storage perspective.
Posted by: Cloud and more cloud | November 07, 2009 at 07:46 AM
Hi "Cloud and more cloud"
Thanks for dropping by. I saw more than a few misconceptions in your post, so I thought I'd try and help out a bit.
First, EMC is bringing far more than storage to this picture, since we're far more than a storage company.
That incremental list includes information management (backup, replication, archiving, etc.), infrastructure management (EMC Ionix) as well as security (RSA). All are part of Vblock.
Many posts on this topic in this blog, you might want to read them
We could debate the appropriateness of traditional block and file storage architectures vs. newer object models in relation to cloud architectures, but I've already done that at length.
Many posts on this topic in this blog, you might want to read them.
I'd agree with you that one of the key ingredients of any cloud-like thing is proven (and advanced) methodology around service management. I'd call it "next gen operational model", but we're saying the same thing.
Many posts on this topic in this blog, you might want to read them.
Your slam that Vblock is nothing more than smoke-and-mirrors is probably ignorance on your part. That's OK, it's relatively new. Give it some time, you'll start to see what we collectively did here.
BTW, I always advise people not to diss what they don't understand.
There's much more than marketing at work here.
Sure, IT architects can assemble any technology in the marketplace and make it work to a certain degree. That model has been in place for a very long time.
But the people who pay their bills are starting to question the value and efficacy of what many of them do.
I know. I talk to them all the time.
And if you're in the business of being an IT architect, time to start figuring out if you're really adding value by mashing together different technologies, or just creating an operational mess.
You're right on some points, though: Nexus and VMware will them themselves, as does UCS. Same can be said for EMC's technology as well.
And, if you happen to like those three vendors, you've now got a new way to implement and use the technology -- one that you didn't have before.
And if you think you can continue to deliver better business value for your employer by mixing and matching various technologies, more power to you.
Thanks for writing.
-- Chuck
Posted by: Chuck Hollis | November 07, 2009 at 12:18 PM
Thanks for the compliment Chuck, Im sure all your readers will enjoy the fact you call people who make comment ignorant.
So maybe i should explain myself a little bit more.
You talk about the integration between EMC,VMware and Cisco with Vblocks so ill keep this fairly simple for all
Can you please confirm for some questions that i have
Vblocks 0 uses Celerra from what i can see so
- Does this mean you need to use Celerra's interface plus the CX console to manage the provisioning of storage
- What Products are included for application consistant snapshops
- What tool is used for DR
- how is Multi Tenancy achieved at the storage level
- Will VCE be providing documented methodology for implementation to its customers
look forward to your thoughts
Posted by: Cloud and more cloud | November 07, 2009 at 06:16 PM
Hi "Cloud and more cloud"
I said that one of your observations was probably based on ignorance, as the announcement is relatively new. "Ignorance" simply means you don't know the facts, which was pretty clear from your comments.
The term is not intended as an insult, just an observation. If you don't want to be thought of as ignorant, perhaps you should restrain your more pointed comments to topics where you know the facts.
BTW, you wouldn't be affiliated with NetApp, would you? Your questions, tone and terminology would make a strong case for that observation.
Also, please be aware I've had about a half-dozen NetApp employees masquerade as customers -- something I find completely unethical.
Your answers:
1. Vblock 0 uses Celerra, Vblock 1 uses CLARiiON, Vblock 2 uses V-Max. Provisioning for all may be done using traditional tools (not recommended), or through the new integrated template-based models being used by all three vendors. EMC Ionix UIM is another option (full details coming soon on that one).
3. The snap mechanisms are the same as found on both vSphere and the Celerra, so the application consistency stories are exactly the same (varies by application, as you know). In larger environments, EMC' "congroup" function can be used to ensure inter-application consistency dependencies if needed.
4. For some strange reason, multi-tenancy is something NetApp tries to make a lot of noise about. e.g. take one small issue and try to make it a Really Big Deal. Not only that, their "solution" to this narrow focus is very weak sauce, IMHO.
In the EMC world, there are a number of multi-tenancy mechanisms to choose from which are a superset of the NetApp-provided options, including host- and app-level encryption if needed -- very strong sauce, indeed.
For customers *really* concerned about security (beyond the multi-tenancy buzzword!), there's the entire RSA portfolio we can bring to bear, including DLP, SEIM and the ability to pass the most stringent audit. More than can be covered in a comment reply, probably worth an extended post or two on this subject alone.
5. Documentation? Of course. Buy the package (i.e. Vblock) or build it yourself as you wish.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to answer your questions.
-- Chuck
Posted by: Chuck Hollis | November 08, 2009 at 12:00 PM
Chuck,
I have read and appreciated your blogs for a long time. It has helped me, as a company owner, to clarify many thoughts with regards to technology and future direction.
I will declare upfront that our buisness has developed a 'go-to-market' strategy based on EMC and VMware. However, these technology partners have been chosen ONLY after considerable due dilligence has been given to all appropriate technology choices.
While we can debate ad nauseum about the 'speeds and feeds' provided by different vendor products, I believe this misses the point - completey!
We work with, and will continue to work with EMC so long as they continue to deliver an integrated solution across an entire stack - not just a disk subsystem.
Our success, IMHO, has been based around the elimination of RISK, both for our customers and ourselves as the integrator. EMC's tight integration of new technologies has allowed us to expand our offerings beyond the 'simple spinning stuff' and provided significant differentiation in the process.
I, for one, am excited by the opportunity to review the Vblock architecture. The idea of a fully tested and certified blueprint will enable us to consider a market space that would otherwise have proven to costly and risky for a company of our size.
Allan
Posted by: Allan | November 10, 2009 at 10:23 PM
Allan
Thank you so much for writing and sharing your thoughts. And if our VCE work between the three companies can help you target larger and more complex opportunities with confidence, we've done well indeed for our partners.
You've made me really smile today, so thank you!
-- Chuck
Posted by: Chuck Hollis | November 11, 2009 at 06:58 AM
Chuck-
I found myself enjoying your posts this evening and then noticed the now obligatory netapp tirades that always seem to end up in your comments area. I don’t think Dave Hitz would think highly of ntap employees posting this dribble as it only makes ntap look pathetic. The annoying part is you are forced to respond thoughtfully which I'm sorry to say is a complete waste of your time. Perhaps I should just avoid reading the comments area from now…
It seems like anytime you have something cool or positive to say, we end up with mislead ntap folks reacting to your articles with misplaced and completely out of context storage vs. storage bake off sales playbook tactics, circa 2001. Not only are they confused about our technology and vision, it's clear they have very little understanding of what VCE is all about.
I've actually found myself feeling sorry for ntap a bit lately. They are very flat footed and spend more time trying to poke holes in EMC and the VCE vision than they do on innovating and evolving their own nas filer technology into something relavent in this day in age.
Posted by: timetoevolve | November 11, 2009 at 09:21 PM