Today’s over provisioned legacy infrastructure environments waste resources and are typically comprised of multiple hardware and software products from different vendors each with diverse management interfaces and training requirements. These infrastructure challenges are driving companies to improve management of their storage environments and many are migrating to hybrid storage models in order to:
- Leverage cost and operational efficiencies
- Simplify the user experience
- Improve power and performance
Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) represents the next logical step in the evolution of infrastructure convergence. It delivers simplification and savings by consolidating all required functionality into a single shared resource pool and accelerates deployment of virtualized workloads by reducing complexity, improving operational efficiency, and lowering costs. All of which make up the primary reasons companies are transitioning.
Prepare Now for the Hyper-converged Infrastructure Wave
Hyper-converged Integrated Systems will be mainstream in five years. Estimated to reach almost $2 billion in 2016, HCI is predicted to be the fastest-growing segment of the integrated systems overall market by more than doubling to almost $5 billion by 2019. In preparation, analysts are advising organizations to ready themselves for this third wave of integrated systems, As Andrew Butler, Gartner analyst explained it, “HCI is not a destination, but an evolutionary journey.”
This HCI journey is accelerating for the same reasons Virtual SAN is so successful; hyper-converged infrastructure systems reduce IT costs and management while achieving breakthrough performance. Partners can rely on VMware, a leader in hyper-converged software with vSphere, Virtual SAN and vCenter Server, to continue the growing trend; first in customer adoption, then in units deployed and revenue growth.
VMware Partners Uniquely Positioned to Leverage the HCI Trend
VMware partners can reap the benefits of the transformative HCI market by helping customers understand how the solution eliminates today’s wasteful compute, storage and networking hardware silos, and how VMware products fit seamlessly into the modern infrastructure. At the end of 2015, we had already witnessed tremendous growth for Virtual SAN, which is core to our VMware Hyper-Converged Software strategy:
- 3,000 customers, adding ~500 per quarter
- 20,000 units / CPU in Q4 alone
- ~200% YoY revenue growth in Q4
As seasoned VMware partners with extensive knowledge of your customers’ existing VMware assets, you are regarded as expert advisors to help them transition to a hyper-converged infrastructure. With VMware’s expanding portfolio supporting this new paradigm, you can add even more value to build upon vSphere environments.
Engaging to deliver an HCI strategy does several things:
- Creates exciting opportunities to sell into new markets
- Delivers flexibility, configurability, and simplicity for customers that reduce their TCO
- Provides a way to upsell or cross-sell VMware software-defined data center offerings
Leverage Existing VMware Investments Throughout HCI Transitions
Customers want to remove complexity from storage and VMware partners have the power to solve the simplicity puzzle by leveraging the customer’s existing VMware investments in hardware, software, licenses and support.
As hyper-converged infrastructures proliferate the market, VMware partners preparing now to participate in the HCI journey will benefit greatly. These prepared partners will leverage their experience with VMware to help extend and protect their customers’ investments as they transition to HCI with VMware Virtual SAN.
VMware Hyper-Converged Software is positioned for ongoing leadership and enables partners to achieve similar success in the transformative HCI market. Here’s how you can get started:
- Check out New Opportunities with VMware Virtual SAN
- Watch how to Execute a VMware Virtual SAN Campaign
- Get Started Learning More about Virtual SAN
- Become a Virtual SAN Expert
