Comments on: A Few Quick Thoughts on the VCE Coalition Announcement

By: Serge Meeuwsen

Serge Meeuwsen — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:51:29 +0000

I think the core idea behind VCE (a bundle of all components you need for a virtual infrastructure) is great. And indeed, as others have mentioned here, other vendors have been free to do this also. Although in all truth, they probably wouldn’t have been able to get the VMware name behind it in the same way, but perhaps that doesn’t really matter so much. As long as we can expect the same level of support from VMware for other HW bundles, which I believe is the case today.
Besides, the beauty of virtualization of course is that we have decoupled the software stack from the hardware stack. So I don’t think there is too much vendor lock-in here. Except for the usual, investments in knowledge and perhaps to VMware to an extent but the introduction of VCE has not fundamentally changed that. I’m sure that Dell, HP and IBM and no doubt others will be able to offer similar VBlocks at some point in the not too distant future for your private cloud (or if you’re building a public one). We could even use the VMark benchmark to compare these various VBlocks based on our requirements and possibly calculate a TCO per VM and/or VBlock.

By: slowe

slowe — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:00:33 +0000

Paul P,

I don’t necessarily agree. Vblocks don’t have to supplant existing infrastructure; they could be used in conjunction with existing infrastructure. It really depends upon the use case.

By: Paul P

Paul P — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:09:11 +0000

Ok, (potentially) great for greenfield sites that do not have any infrastructure in place.

Got HP, IBM, Dell, ‘enter your favorite vender here’.
You are excluded…

By: Collin C. MacMillan

Collin C. MacMillan — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:41:27 +0000

Seems we’ve gone from “use case” based architectures to Vblock in one year’s time - a definite shift in message that says, “we’ve boiled it all down to VMware, UCS plus EMC storage A, B or C.” The technology and players in VCE are compelling, and doesn’t it make sense to take what are arguably the best of breed products and marry them into a ubiquitous solution block?

As a short-term play the VCE proposition (Vblock 2) sounds good for large enterprise clouds with little experience in architecting scale-out virtualization platforms. I say this because conventional wisdom is orthogonal to the disruptive technologies that create real opportunities in the market, and VCE seems to embody the pinnacle of today’s conventional wisdom. But then UCS and Vmax were designed to serve a specific type of customer, while VMware’s virtues are generally agnostic.

We all know the problem with very large building blocks: they don’t scale down, hence VCE delivers Vblock 1 with a switch to EMC CLARiiON. Likewise, Vblock 0 right-sizes storage with a switch to EMC Celerra. The common threads are vSphere, UCS, Nexus 1000v and Cisco MDS - covering 300 to 6,000 virtual machines (per Vblock). Again, this is nothing truly new for Cisco, EMC or VMware, just polish and packaged deployment of goods and services.

I’m with you, Scott, being confounded by the indirect message delivered here. On the face it is a “packaged solution” based on industry leading architectures. But - as it has been said - this could have been done without VMware’s participation in the venture. I would have liked to see an alliance with at least one other SAN, blade and fabric vendor. As it stands, VCE helps Cisco’s UCS initiative, solidifies EMC’s prowess in virtualization storage and isolates VMware in a new and potentially harmful way.

In the end, there will be plenty of market to absorb VCE. However, many will see VCE as a lock-in architecture and will resist unless compelled by market forces. Hopefully, VMware will exercise its independence and create a similar “ratified solution stack” with some other players to remain more neutral: maybe a Virtual Hardware Xceleration with VMware, HP and Xsigo - the VHX initiative…

By: J Shelton

J Shelton — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:37:51 +0000

When the day comes that only your “cloud” providers actually buy all of the hardware…do many of these “concerns” still exist?

By: rdanie01

rdanie01 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:23:27 +0000

I think what is being missed in this announcement is the Vendor Lock in of the Application Co’s (Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, etc.) They charge exorbinant maintenance fees as there right and the customer is getting little to know business value for that. VMW’s new features such as storage Vmotion for example will never force any customer into complex migrations of the HW or HW vendor lock in again. However if customers begin to standardize on an infrastructure and say “This is what your application will run on and if not I am seemlessly moving to a different CRM tool” and will not incure huge Infrastucture investments to do so that is where the long term value of VMware will be. This is a HW solution that has little to do with HW and more to do with which side of the house drives the purchasing process. Infrastructure Giants vs. Application Giants. My take is this is an attempt by the largest infrastructure companies in the world putting their stake in the ground and saying standardize on the Infrastucuture and run any app you’d like. It doesn’t even have to be VCE, vBlock, etc. This is just a highly integrated version of something you can try to build on your own with different component parts. Larry Elison over at Oracle just announced an intention to have Vendor lock in from the Application to the Tape that backs it up with the Exadata II announcement! Applications have driven infrastructure investments forever and the islands of information and complexity in data centers today are a direct result of that. I think customers forget just how locked into applications they are and the annuity costs associated with the difficulty to change. Imagine a day where switching from Oracle to SAP or Outlook to Notes is as seemless and costly as switching from Netscape to Internet Explorer. That is the value of the Data Center Operating System. That is the challenge the largest tech companies in the world VMW, EMC, Cisco, HP, IBM, MSFT, Oracle, SAP, Google, Amazon etc. have in front of them. Round 1 went to IBM and the Mainframe, Round 2 went to the Application Companies. Who will win Round 3? VMW + HW / Services companies, Application Complanies, or Next Gen “Cloud” Companies in the war for control of global corporate data centers. Should be very interesting.
-Brian

By: Chad Sakac

Chad Sakac — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:58:12 +0000

Scott - I think you concerns are reasonable.

We tried hard to make it clear that it was Cisco AND EMC, WITH VMware in the VCE Coalition in general, and that Acadia is a Cisco/EMC (and Intel and other minority investors) joint venture. VMware is NOT part of that - it would cross an important line.

It is very important that VMware remain independent, but it is also important that Cisco and EMC share VMware’s vision, goals, and we are strategically aligned. That strategic alignment includes a complexity - that alignment of strategies involves one of the parties more than the other two, needing to partner with moral enemies of the other two.

If that sounds strange, recognize that that is how EMC and VMware have been operating for years now, and doing that succesfully (pass behavior is not a predictor of future behavior, I know, but at least it should buy us a little trust when we say it).

I’ve posted a longer story on this here:
http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/11/virtual-compute-environment-is-vmware-still-independent.html

By: Massimo Re Ferre'

Massimo Re Ferre' — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:08:10 +0000

I think “Bobsta” hits the nail on the head.

My feeling is that there are more discussions about VCE than what it deserves.

Massimo.

By: TimH

TimH — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:07:05 +0000

I think many end users will be wary of doing business with someone who sits un the same dugout as EMC.

UCS is an outstanding product but I fear that it will be a net loss for Cisco.

-Tim-

By: Marc Farley

Marc Farley — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:41:58 +0000

There is a big difference between this and the usual marketing alliance insofar as they are going to try to sell the vBlock solution together. That creates a lot of logistical problems for EMC, Cisco and VMware and I suspect Acadia is being formed to solve those problems. But that doesn’t mean the problems go away because these companies don’t sell the same way and are used to sharing the wealth differently. Acadia is not likely going to make the solution less expensive seeing as how it will add overhead to the process. Maybe they should have named it vBucks.

I don’t know what Paul Maritz could have done differently. Do you really think he had a choice?