VCE — the Virtual Computing Environment Company backed by VMware, Cisco and EMC — is making the move to distribution this month. On the one hand the move isn’t surprising, based on VCE announcements from May 2011. But on the other hand, Ingram Micro is striving to get ahead of the story — hoping to position itself as VCE’s leading distributor.
According to chatter from Ingram, the distributor is working with more than 50 VCE partners. Ken Bast, VP and GM of Ingram Micro’s Advanced Technologies Division, offered up this prepared statement:
“We laid out our go-to-market strategy for VCE in May, sku’d up the solution sets and hit the ground running,” says Bast. “In just a matter of months, we’ve gained significant traction in the field, closed some serious sales and carved out a strong value proposition for the VCE partner base. The value of distribution to the VCE business is evolving quickly from logistics and order management to partner enablement and custom configuration.”
Of course, VCE has multiple distribution partners — including Arrow, Avnet and Ingram Micro in the United States, and Magirus in Europe. VCE claims that its partner program “leverages the benefits and incentives of Cisco, EMC and VMware channel programs while providing a one-stop-shop for promoting and reselling VblockTM Infrastructure Platforms.”
The VCE partner program offers:
- Single point ordering and registration for the Vblock Infrastructure Platform solution
- Incremental volume incentives
- Stackable applicable back-end incentives from Cisco and EMC channel programs
- Proposal-based MDF program
- Role-based enablement training
The VAR Guy is intrigued. Assuming VCE succeeds, it could give Cisco Systems Inc. a much-needed lift. Cisco has hit multiple financial bumps in the past year, though Cisco CEO John Chambers earlier today expressed some optimism while discussing fiscal Q4 2011 results.
Meanwhile, The VAR Guy will be watching to see how VCE ramps up its channel partner program. Four distribution partners seem poised to assist the effort. But Ingram Micro is the first one to raise its hand and demand some respect from The VAR Guy.
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I am still wishy-washy on VCE. Why should I go with a company like VCE? I can just buy all of the components individually, to make my own private cloud solution from the parent companies.
Heck I’d rather buy a flex pod, throw away the NetApp storage and replace it with EMC and call it a day.
Does anyone know if VCE is financially stable? It appears like VCE is more of a marketing department. Are the rumors of layoffs true?
The big VCE drivers are time to delivery and seamless support.
When you buy a Vblock, it comes as one or more pre-built, pre-cabled racks of gear. VCE drops it into your datacenter, runs any inter-rack cabling, connects it to your infrastructure, and hands you the keys.
And when there’s an issue, there’s a single number to call to get access to a team of engineers dedicated to Vblock-related issues. No playing the finger-pointing game between EMC, Cisco, and VMware.
For some people, those are worth the slight premium in cost.
On the other two questions, I’m hearing yes to both, but that’s just more rumor.
John@1: The VAR Guy appreciates your insights. Are you a channel partner or a VCE rival? Just trying to get a feel for your business focus. Also, where did you hear about alleged VCE layoffs? The VAR Guy will investigate.
Ralph@2: You raise good points about the VCE drivers. They are on the mark, though The VAR Guy realizes there are plenty of viable VCE alternatives as well.
-TVG
Yes – the layoffs are true. Started early this week.
Sevew MM: The VAR Guy has asked VCE’s media contact for a comment about the rumored layoffs. Officially, The VAR Guy has not independently confirmed the layoffs. But if/when VCE replies with a comment you’ll see an update here.
-TVG
The secret sauce is “a single pane of glass” that allows you to manage all the integrated elements. Cisco ethernet switches, Cisco fibre channel switches (in some configs), Cisco blade servers, EMC storage, and VMware, all managed from a tool called UIM (based on EMC’s popular Ionix software). If you have a single Vblock, or dozens of them, you can still manage them from “a single pane of glass.”
Pretty hard to do that with a build-it-yourself approach.
Another aspect is that larger enterprises don’t WANT their IT folks spending their days playing with erector sets. Sure, it’s fun to put stuff together, but while three IT persons are doing that at Company A, three counterpart IT persons at Company B are developing a new service to help internal users be more efficient in their jobs or a new service that makes it easier for external customers to purchase products, etc.
The question that IT Business persons ask these days: How can I help my company or organization do more with the same head count and often the same budget? The answer is not found in IT persons spending afternoons putting together erector sets (or Lego kits for you younger folks out there).
That is the business value of purchasing a “cloud in a box” that includes server blades, storage, connectivity, virtualization software, and a single management platform. All of this is tested as single components a Cisco and EMC, and then further tested on the Vblock integration floor, also at EMC. EMC has been building and testing “bullet proof” IT systems for over two decades – not a bad place to have your erector kit put together and tested by professionals.
UIM is the only part of the Vblock experience that I can complain about. It’s sold as described above, and someday it might do all that, but today it’s extremely limited. On a 300, it can automate zoning and ESXi installations. That’s about it. Day to day management, including any VM operations, adding new datastores, or adding new cluster nodes, is done through the individual element managers.
Skooba@6: You raise some great points. But third-party vendors also are trying to offer that single pane of glass for Vblock deployments. Nimsoft comes to mind…
Ralph@7: If you spot Vblock progress let The VAR Guy know. In the meantime thanks for offering your thoughts on current limitations.
All: The VAR Guy has been in touch with a VCE spokeswoman about alleged VCE staff changes/layoffs. As of Monday night, Aug. 15, VCE officials were traveling and not available for comment… Stay tuned…
-TVG
The Unified Infrastructure Manager [UIM] is something that VCE has been toting about for awhile now. Designed/developed by parent [EMC], the UIM is extremely limited-and that is being nice.
I am hearing that internally the UIM is something that the Sales team seems to push as an offering.
Personally, I prefer Cisco Tidal, it is much better-and am not sure why this is not the main attraction.
Blades have been a disaster for primary vendors for years, if performance and availability is not important, try writing in down on paper.
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