Chuck's Blog

From Periphery To Center: The Evolution Of Vblocks

I make no apologies whatsoever. 

I am an unabashed fan of Vblocks: a converged IT infrastructure, produced and delivered by a converged entity (VCE), and consumed by converged IT organizations. 

I was one of the earliest -- and perhaps the most vocal -- proponents of this new model.  My posts on the subject drew more than a reasonable amount of criticism and outright scorn at the time. 

That's to be expected, really.  I was challenging conventional wisdom of how IT infrastructure should be organized and delivered.

But time has a way of helping people catch up.  For many, the discussion has now evolved from "why would we do that?" to "how quickly can we get there?".

People tended to focus on deconstructing the Vblock itself, rather than the stepping back and understanding the context it was envisioned for.   For example, if you run your IT infrastructure group as traditional, isolated silos, you look at something like a Vblock and say "that's not how we do things".  And you'd be quite right.

However, if you've invested in delivering services vs. silos (ITaaS), the logic and appeal of a Vblock is almost irresistible.

As more IT groups are evolving their model, Vblocks continue to succeed in the market.  That success enables additional investments, forming the basis of today's big VCE announcement.  For me, there's two components of the announcement: the sort of thing you might expect, and a rather controversial surprise worth discussing in more detail.

So let's dive in.

Workload Mobility Is More Real Than You Might Think

One of the many holy grails in data center architectures has been the notion of workload mobility: the ability to pick up an arbitrary set of applications (and their data!), move them over a distance, and do so with an absolute minimum of effort and disruption.

It's an incredibly useful capability, especially if you've got multiple data centers and veritable zoo of applications in your menagerie.  

Move apps to get to newer hardware. 
Move apps to get more performance. 
Move apps to save some money. 
Move apps to rebalance. 
Move apps because you need to take some infrastructure off-line. 
Move apps to increase protection levels. 
Move apps because you've got a new data center location.

No shortage of good, practical reasons of why you'd occasionally want to move a set of workloads. 

They put casters on heavy appliances for a reason!

But moving applications around has always been a complex and disruptive pain -- lots of planning, lots of coordination, lots of downtime.  Not the sort of thing that IT professionals warmly embrace with enthusiasm and passion.

But -- for some IT shops -- that's started to change.  And we'll see more in the near future -- I'm sure of it.

More From VCE At Cisco Live 2012

I make no apologies whatsoever for being an unabashed fan of VCE and Vblocks.

Converged infrastructure (and converged operations!) are turning out to be a compelling transformative tool for enterprises and IT service providers alike. 

Rarely in my career have I seen something change so much for so many people.

When VCE announced a number of enhancements at EMC World 2012 a few weeks back, I thought they were done for a while. 

Nope, as it turns out they've got even more interesting bits to share at this week's Cisco Live event. 

And, if you're going, you might want to make some time to chat with the VCE crew.

VCE Vblock: Charting The Changes

On paper, VCE is a free-standing company -- a joint venture between EMC and Cisco, with participation from both VMware and Intel.

But many of us here at EMC don't think of them that way: they're a key part of our cloud strategy in the marketplace for enterprise customers and service providers alike.

At the time of introduction, their value proposition was somewhat controversial: in exchange for asking the customer to conform to certain configurations and operational processes, a vastly superior result could be achieved.

That bold claim is neither theoretical or esoteric; it's now been backed hundreds and hundreds of customer environments. Proof points are everywhere, including this home-grown infographic from a typical VCE customer.

In a recent post, I asked Todd Pavone if anything had shown up in the marketplace that was creating a serious alternative to the Vblock proposition. His answer -- in a nutshell -- was "no, not yet".

Part of the strength of Vblocks is the VCE organization itself: over 1000+ professionals with one mission: deliver a superior, integrated customer experience.

And, in my book, it's all about organizing for success :)

As part of the EMC World 2012 festivities, VCE is announcing a number of enhancements which further extend and differentiation the Vblock proposition.

Introducing VSPEX

This morning, EMC introduced VSPEX: a partner-centric pre-configured and pre-integrated infrastructure stack.  

Yes, we're pretty excited.  

Some will inevitably classify this announcement as yet another variation on a popular theme in the IT infrastructure marketplace.  

I mean, isn't every IT vendor packaging up infrastructure in new ways?  

Yes, somewhat true -- but many of us believe that there's plenty of room left for innovation and differentiation in this category.

VSPEX is not only interesting in what it does on its own, but how it nicely fits in to other things EMC is investing in -- like VCE and Vblocks.

An Update From My Friends At VCE

If you're a long-time reader of this blog, you know I can't hide my enthusiasm for what VCE is doing with Vblocks.  

By making converged infrastructure easier to consume, they've helped many IT organizations accelerate their transition to cloud and IT-as-a-service models. 

But -- as is always true with any new concept that upsets traditional orthodoxy -- it hasn't come without a fair amount of controversy: some thoughtful and intellectual, and occasionally a bit of unprofessional mudslinging and innuendo. 

I had a chance to catch up with one of my good friends and long-time EMC colleagues who is now at VCE: Todd Pavone, responsible for engineering and marketing at the company. 

We had a great opportunity to share perspectives on what's really going on at VCE -- and what might lie ahead. 

It's The Big Launch Day For EMC IT's ITaaS

I consider it an article of faith that many enterprise IT organizations will need to learn to compete for their internal customers.

If you've been following this blog, you know I've been drawing heavily on the experiences of EMC's own IT organization as they progress through this inevitable transformation.

Today represents an interesting milestone of sorts: the formal internal launch of a "critical mass" of self-provisioned IT services that anyone at EMC can freely consume.  

Yes, they've had many of these internal services out there for a while, but now our EMC IT team has started to actively encourage consumption at scale.

I think this particular event serves as an excellent example of how the thinking changes when enterprise IT goes from being seen as a monopoly to being seen as an aggressive competitor.

If you work in an IT setting that's starting to go through some of these changes, I think you'll find the discussion here very enlightening.

EMC vLab: What Happens When You Point A Cloud At A Business Challenge

Clouds are exceptionally difficult to discuss in the abstract.  

They become much more real and tangible when you associate them with a particular business challenge.

As a result, I've started to collect various "cloud meets business" success stories.  They're all very cool, but they take some serious time to write up.

I thought I'd start with an internal one first: how EMC's vLab cloud is changing an important aspect of the way EMC does business.

Although there are aspects that are unique to EMC and our particular situation, I believe there are many useful lessons here that can be more broadly applied.

Doing More With Less: VCE Vblocks and EMC UIM

OK, I admit it, I'm a big fan of the Vblock concept, and -- by extension -- UIM, the Unified Infrastructure Manager provided by EMC.

Why?  It represents some of the very best thinking in cloud-like infrastructure available today.  More and more IT professionals now realize that -- yes -- there's now a better way of doing things. 

I think that anyone who's looked closely at IT-as-a-service concepts realize that rampant standardization coupled with intelligent automation is where the real action is; the hardware simply is an enabler. 

So, it was with great interest that I got a preview a while back on what was coming soon with the next major release of UIM. 

Vblock FastPath/VDI -- Changing The Model

If you follow this blog, you know I'm an ardent and passionate fan of the Vblock concept.  I just can't help myself.

For me, it represents acceleration.  

At a tactical level, that means getting results faster.  

At an operational level, it's the ability to spend more time on the stuff that matters and less time on the stuff that doesn't.

And -- strategically -- it means accelerating IT's transition to an internal service provider.

If you've sat through the Vblock roadmap sessions, you'll notice that development is progressing nicely around two axes.  One important axis is "better Vblocks": faster, more efficient, more functionality, better security, better operational integration, and so forth.  I always am surprised at just how fast these folks are moving.

The other axis is becoming important as well: pointing the Vblock concept at well-established IT use cases, and creating sinlge-SKU "products" that bring the Vblock model (real product vs. reference architecture, speed of deployment, pre-integration, single support, etc.) to specific and popular use cases.

Such is the case with the new Vblock FastPath/VDI.  In a nutshell, it's a single product you can buy that does VDI -- at scale -- in a box.