VCE Introduces The Next Era In Converged Infrastructure Innovation

RICHARDSON, Texas, March 12, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- VCE, the worldwide leader in converged infrastructure, today announced a major expansion to its industry-leading converged infrastructure portfolio with a series of new platform and software innovations focused on speeding and simplifying the customer journey to the hybrid cloud. VCE is expanding the scope of converged infrastructure integration from physical hardware elements to include application and cloud infrastructure, driving an evolution from converged infrastructure to converged solutions.

VCE introduced groundbreaking advancements to its converged solutions portfolio:

VCE Vscale Architecture is a new, innovative "scale up" AND "scale out" architecture that delivers simplicity and speed at data center scale. VCE Vscale architecture leverages a next-generation converged fabric to interconnect multiple converged infrastructure systems and data center elements, providing optimized, on-demand resource sharing.

VCE VxBlock Systems are a new family of converged infrastructure systems designed to enable greater flexibility in system components for customers. The first VxBlock System announced today will offer Cisco® Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) or VMware NSX™ as a customer choice for software-defined networking (SDN) functionality, along with Cisco networking and computing, EMC storage and data protection, and VMware virtualization and virtualization management. VCE VxBlock Systems will receive the same "VCE Experience" of factory-based pre-integration, pre-testing and pre-validation with seamless component-level updates, ongoing lifecycle assurance, and unified single-call support. Additional VxBlock Systems will be introduced throughout 2015.

VCE Vision™ Intelligent Operations 3.0 is a major update to the company's converged infrastructure management software for delivering operational simplicity through a consistent, accurate, and common systems view. VCE Vision software capabilities have been expanded to provide unified intelligence across multiple VCE converged infrastructure systems – either independent or as part of a Vscale architecture – enabling efficient multi-system management and converged operations at scale.

"VCE's mission since inception has been to free IT organizations from expending resources and effort managing infrastructure, so they could deliver next-generation services to their end users," said Praveen Akkiraju, CEO of VCE. "VCE's approach is unique and differentiated as we focus on understanding the customer problem, integrating new technologies in a high-performance solution supported with a single call. This new set of platforms and solutions represents the first phase of major expansion for the scale and scope of the VCE portfolio and value proposition."

Today converged infrastructure is the preferred way for organizations to deploy next-generation IT that enables them to create a bridge between their current applications and the cloud. While new technologies continue to arrive at a rapid pace, VCE's position as the clear market leader^{1, 2} is built on a differentiated solutions approach combined with the broad trust of customers, enabling VCE to once again set the industry standard.

"As a pioneer in the converged infrastructure market, VCE exemplifies the desire of IT professionals to distance themselves from being in the infrastructure integration business by embracing modern IT consumption models," said Mark Bowker, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "The enhanced spectrum of solutions provides significantly enhanced levels of scalability, an open-door design and ways for IT professionals to invest in VCE-enabled software-defined data center solutions that provide strategic longevity."

VCE Converged Solutions Portfolio

In addition to the advancements announced today, VCE has recently introduced multiple offerings to expand its portfolio to deliver a broad range of converged platforms and solutions designed to provide speed, scale and simplicity, and accelerate customers' journey to the hybrid cloud:

• VCE technology extensions are pre-integrated, pre-tested and pre-validated hardware extensions that enable additional flexibility and scalability for new and existing Vblock Systems and VxBlock Systems. VCE technology extensions enable customers to expand their VCE converged infrastructure with additional storage and compute resources – including EMC® Islion®, EMC XtremIO and Cisco Unified Computing System™ (UCS) – with the same factory-built VCE Experience including component-level upgrades and single-call support.
• VCE Foundations for Federation Enterprise Hybrid Cloud is a converged solution designed to accelerate the deployment and management of hybrid cloud environments. The solution drives an even greater degree of convergence by extending the standardized, repeatable practices of the unique VCE Experience to the Federation Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, providing factory integration of additional VMware and EMC technologies including VMware NSX network virtualization, VMware vRealize™ management and orchestration software, and EMC® ViPR® software-defined storage. The solution also includes technology onramps to VMware vCloud® Air™, enabling customers with seamless management, workload migration and disaster recovery between their private and public cloud environments.
• The Vblock System 540, announced in October 2014 and now shipping in volume, is the industry's first all-flash-based converged infrastructure system for consolidating mixed workloads such as private clouds, end-user computing, databases and other latency-sensitive applications. The Vblock System 540 is powered by EMC's market-leading XtremIO™ all-flash arrays, next-generation Cisco Unified Computing and Cisco Nexus ACI-Ready networking.
• The Vblock System 740, announced in October 2014 and now shipping in volume, is the industry's most advanced, intelligent converged infrastructure, with unmatched performance, capacity and availability for the most demanding mission-critical applications. The Vblock System 740 is powered by next-generation Cisco Unified Computing, Cisco Nexus ACI-Ready networking and EMC VMAX® 3 storage.
• VCE Foundations for Cisco UCS® Director provides the VCE Experience for cloud management software from Cisco on Vblock Systems and VxBlock Systems to simplify deployment and management of cloud computing. Seamlessly integrated with VCE converged infrastructure and VCE Vision software, this out-of-the-box cloud solution supports rapid, cost-effective implementation of private or hybrid cloud infrastructure with the lowest risk for cloud management environments based on Cisco UCS Director with the same factory-built VCE Experience, including component-level upgrades and single-call support.

CUSTOMER & PARTNER ENDORSEMENTS

"VCE Vscale Architecture will allow us the flexibility of using the cloud to best serve our students, faculty practitioners, support service teams and other operational leaders. This flexibility creates a state we want to be in and we believe VCE will get us there."
–Michael Sajor, chief information officer, Apollo Education Group, Inc., one of the world's largest private education providers

"VCE's launch today helps customers simplify IT data center architectures, and shifts the conversation with CIOs to strategic business decisions. VCE will significantly expand the scale and scope of its solutions, enabling our joint customers to take better advantage of hybrid cloud and next-generation IT opportunities."
–Tom Tormey, vice president, Technology Alliances, EMC Corporation

"VMware and VCE are accelerating customers' path to the hybrid cloud. By delivering new solutions that integrate VMware's innovative VMware NSX network virtualization and vRealize management solutions, VCE is offering converged solutions that enable customers to adopt a brave, new model of IT with confidence."
–Raghu Raghuram, executive vice president and general manager, Software-Defined Data Center Division, VMware

"Applications are driving new demands for our customers' data centers – whether they are physical, virtual, bare metal or in the cloud. To move at the speed of business, our customers need to deliver applications at scale and in a highly secure manner where they need them and when they need them. By leveraging Cisco Nexus 9000 and Cisco MDS as core building blocks of the Vscale architecture, VCE solutions can dramatically enhance the delivery of applications with speed, simplicity and scale. We believe Vblock and VxBlock systems with Cisco ACI will create a new gold standard for application-centric converged infrastructure delivering more value to our customers and accelerating data center and cloud build-outs."
–Ish Limkakeng, vice president, Marketing, Insieme Business Unit, Cisco

AVAILABILITY

VCE Vscale Architecture, VCE VxBlock Systems and VCE Vision Intelligent Operations 3.0 will be orderable in Q2 2015. VCE converged solutions are available from VCE and its global network of business partners.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• Read the VCE Vblog by CEO Praveen Akkiraju, The Next Evolution of Converged Infrastructure Solutions
• Read the VCE Vblog, VCE Vscale Architecture: Bridging the Data Center Gap for Platform 2 and 3 Apps
• Read the EMC Pulse blog, Making it Simple: VCE Redefines Converged Infrastructure
• Read the VMware blogs, Introducing New VCE VxBlock Systems with Integrated VMware NSX and VCE and VMware: Accelerating the Software-Defined Data Center, Simplifying Customers' Path to the Hybrid Cloud
• Read the Cisco blog, "Ready, Set...Cloud! Vblock, VxBlock and Cisco ACI usher in Operational Simplicity and Software Defined Innovation for the Cloud Era"

VCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

• Vblog, VCE Corporate Blog
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Google+
• YouTube

ABOUT VCE

VCE provides converged solutions that accelerate the adoption of cloud-based computing models for enterprises and service providers globally. Based on VCE's industry-leading converged infrastructure, VCE converged solutions dramatically simplify IT, enabling customers to focus on business innovation instead of integrating, validating and managing IT infrastructure.

¹ Gartner Market Share Analysis: Data Center Hardware Integrated Systems, 2013, July, 31 2014
² IDC Worldwide Integrated Infrastructure & Platforms Tracker, September 25, 2014

Copyright © 2015 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. VCE, VCE Vision, VCE Vscale , Vblock, VxBlock, and the VCE logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of VCE Company LLC. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VCE and any other organization.

VMware, vCloud Air, VMware NSX and vRealize are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. or its subsidiary in the United States and other jurisdictions. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company. 

SOURCE VCE

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