back to article VCE boss Chad Sakac bets he'll win the hyperconverged market

VCE's new VxRail hyperconverged appliance sold 146 units in its first 44 days on sale and the EMC server unit's new leader Chad Sakac says that impressive start means he's betting the outfit will become the leading hyperconverged systems vendor by the end of 2016. Nutanix is felt to be the revenue leader in the field, having …

  1. Nate Amsden

    less than 4 per day

    Doesn't seem like impressive numbers to me, is the HCI market that weak? I mean it's not as if this is a new product, EMC has hyperconverged stuff before and no doubt has been telling customers for months this was coming. I'm sure there are a lot of customers that were holding off purchasing knowing this was coming.

    (myself I don't care about HCI, I don't even have "converged" systems, more old school unconverged systems)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: less than 4 per day

      EVO:RAIL sold like buckets of sand in the Sahara. Nutanix sells pretty strongly. But VxRail is very attractive cost-wise now and EMC has announced an upgrade path from VSPEX Blue, so things might be looking up. Especially in net-new accounts, a lot of them were suddenly reconsidering VCE after the Dell acquisition and now that Michael Dell has stated that the pieces will keep running as they are many of those deals sound like they're getting back on track.

  2. m0rt

    How is Hyperconverged different to converged?

    Other than spelling.

    1. Nate Amsden

      Re: How is Hyperconverged different to converged?

      Converged usually means external storage.

    2. Rozzy

      Re: How is Hyperconverged different to converged?

      Hyperconverged systems include a hypervisor to the stack, in addition to the converged compute, networking and storage.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cisco will remain in vBlocks

    Of course they will. vBlocks mean EMC, Cisco and VMware - nothing else is allowed (don't forget Cisco still own a small share of VCE).

    What will be interesting is what comes out in vXBlocks - any server and networking is allowed in there. There will definitely be Dell-based vXBlocks, and how long will it be before EMC's new owner changes commission to 0% on vBlocks and 200% on vXBlocks - see how many vBlocks are proposed by EMC sales then...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    EMC / Dell - should offer two flavors

    VCE - with cisco servers / networking

    VDE - with Dell servers / networking

    Compute is largely a commodity and with the VCE management interface insulating the customer from Cisco's UCS management, it's largely irrelevant what gear is behind the scenes, other than to lower pricing on the overall VCE offering.

    Ditto switches. Cisco can't come close to Dell's pricing on Force10 vs Catalyst/Nexus

    Of course the channel will whine: their professional services they can add onto a sale will be cut because the Dell tin is less complex and less difficult to install, but the customers will benefit in lower acquisition costs, quicker time to install, closer integration and lower operating costs: in my opinion, Dell has done a far better job with VCenter integration than Cisco (or HP)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: EMC / Dell - should offer two flavors

      Dell already offers converged solutions combining PowerEdge servers, Compellent storage, and Force10 networking with their own management and automation overlay. I don't think they need to move it into the VCE portfolio, vBlocks will continue to sell and Dell will make money from them, and where VCE isn't a fit for whatever reason, well, Dell already has an alternative they can sell you AND they already know there's an opportunity there to pursue.

      I would like to see more pre-built systems with FX2 though.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: EMC / Dell - should offer two flavors

      It is completely obvious that you have absolutely zero knowledge about UCS and Nexus.

      Besides that, VCE's fame to claim lies in their Release Compatibility Matrix (pre-validated and certified matrix upgrades for the entire stack) which is 80% based on UCS' compute and network convergence, which takes care of interoperability from the fabric interconnects via the extenders/IOM into the VICs and takes care of the x86 platform code. If you take that away and replace it with Dell you'd have to triple or quadruple the RCM team as well as Dan Butzer's team in engineering. There is no way Dell or EMC are going to approve 100 additional FTEs. Those teams are stretched thin as is with vxRack and VxRail validation (and the Broadwell and PSU fiasco), not to mention UCS Manager 3.0, FI 63xx, and Broadwell on M4.

      Dream on buddy. They'll milk the enterprise market as long as they can while getting eaten by AWS and Azure/Hyper-V. All their best sales reps in California and Colorado already left, I am pretty sure Illinois and New York are no better. The death watch has started ...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: EMC / Dell - should offer two flavors

      There is no VCE management interface on V(x)blocks. Vblock customers use the native element managers to manage network, storage, compute, and vSphere.

      VCE really likes to imply Vision does anything of value, but it doesn't yet.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: EMC / Dell - should offer two flavors

      Dell's real motive may be to tap into VCE and kick out csco

  5. cintra
    WTF?

    The bleedin' obvious

    "sales tend to accelerate once a product hits the market". Well... Yeah.

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