Today, VMware announced its new vSphere 4 platform at an event in Palo Alto. Michael Dell joined VMware CEO Paul Maritz on stage, along with other industry luminaries including EMC’s Joe Tucci, Cisco’s John Chambers and Intel’s Pat Gelsinger, to participate in the announcement of the industry’s first cloud operating system.
With vSphere, VMware aims to simplify cloud infrastructure with IT services for both internal and external clouds. What made this an interesting announcement was the recognition for the hard work of their own engineering community (who sat all in blue t-shirts on the lawn) and the collaboration they have had with others in the industry.
For our part, Dell worked extensively with VMware throughout the development of vSphere with comprehensive testing and compatibility processes. Dell customers were also part of the vSphere Beta Customer Program, and we received rave reviews from the pre-release vSphere code testing. Together with VMware, Dell is making virtualized infrastructures faster to implement and manage.
Our new EqualLogic PS6000 series SAN is vSphere- and vStorage-ready out of the box. Our new 11th generation of PowerEdge servers with vSphere 4.0 deliver up to 168 percent faster performance and are up to 135 percent more energy efficient. Not only does Dell partner with VMware to solve customer problems – we are the number one reseller of VMware—but we are also a customer with one of the largest VMware installations in the world.
During the event, Michael brought to sharp focus the issue of enterprise IT waste. For every $1 spent on acquiring new technology, customers typically spend $8 managing it. This waste is magnified by poor server utilization, power consumption and ever-increasing consulting dollars to manage the infrastructure. According to Michael, virtualization will not only drive the next wave of innovation but new efficiencies as well, from the desktop to the data center, and into the cloud.
Michael went on to discuss how customers are looking for a cloud platform or deployment environment that is open, is interoperable, runs on industry standards and is virtualized. Dell works with the largest cloud providers in the world and has built more than 19 cloud-optimized platforms. If there’s one thing we learned by working with these leading cloud providers, it’s that variation kills. vSphere provides a common, homogenized environment that enables cloud providers to utilize economies of scale, accelerating the delivery of business services.
He also discussed how the future of cloud computing will be both on- and off-premise. This is where VMware’s vSphere comes in as a key enabler. VMware’s vision is to create a homogenous environment where customer workloads can be hosted behind their own firewall or with a service provider, all managed under a single context. In this way, these customers can achieve new levels of operational efficiencies. Enterprise computing is at a tipping point driven by cloud computing and virtualization and Dell is committed to shifting customers into the new era of IT efficiency. Together with VMware we will make virtualized infrastructures faster to implement and to manage. We are laying the foundation for a more efficient enterprise running from the desktop to the cloud.
The big takeaway is that today marks a new landmark in Dell’s partnership with VMware as we will expand our vision to embrace the cloud computing, and fully address one of the most pressing issues facing companies and organizations of all kinds and sizes – the efficiency of enterprise IT. I’d love to hear from any of you who were also in the audience on your take on the launch today.