Wow – what a week VMworld US in San Francisco turned out to be! Like most attendees, my days were spent racing around the Moscone Center to hear the VMware executive keynotes, explore the show floor and sit-in on various sessions all the while darting back and forth between there and the Marriott Marquis for numerous customer meetings. If only I had a Fit Bit to calculate just how many steps I took over those four days!
Now that the dust has settled, I want to share some of the excitement of VCE’s presence at the show. Naturally one of the highlights was our announcement of the VCE VxRack, a hyper-converged system based on the VMware EVO SDDC. This new persona of VxRack enables IT organizations to quickly and cost effectively build and operate their cloud to realize the full benefits of a VMware software-defined data center (SDDC). Not only does this persona provide more choice for our customers to map VxRack Systems to specific application environments, it also expands the industry’s most comprehensive set of converged infrastructure solutions – Vblocks/VxBlock, VxRacks and the VSPEX BLUE appliance – that help organizations accelerate and simplify their journey to the cloud.
Every time I visited our booth it was buzzing with excitement. The “VCE Don’t Sweat IT” social media contest provided folks a chance to win an iPad mini by tweeting their customized Sweatband Sam photo. There was always a knee-deep line to get this photo that was then made into a button – I think we used up every pin in the city of San Francisco. The theatre was always packed – standing room only – to hear from not only VCE experts but also those from VMware, EMC and Cisco. In addition to the insights of our resident experts, the customer presentations were one of the biggest hits! To me there is nothing more powerful then a compelling customer testimonial that shows the business outcomes we talk about are actually real. That being said I feel incredibly lucky that VCE has so many happy customers willing to share their stories publicly. At VMworld US we had six different customers present their story about how a Vblock System serves as their infrastructure foundation that can scale and respond to the needs of the business in a predictable, responsive and seamless manner. These included:
- Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants, the largest chain of boutique hotels in the United States, highlighted how a VCE Vblock System provided them the scale they needed for rapid business expansion that helped the business plan for the future. With the VCE Vblock solutions in place, Kimpton is able to respond to the needs of the business in a predictable, responsive and seamless manner, which in-turn, contributes to their customer’s experience. Other benefits realized include their ability to reduce OpEx by 25%, experience 99.9% uptime and have their IT organization focus more time on driving value for the business.
- CenturyLink, an American multinational communications company, provides communications and data services to customers in more than 36 states and across the globe. As a VCE Partner and Systems Integrator, CenturyLink described the managed services offerings they provide to their customers using VCE Vblock converged infrastructure. They shared how their customer, Intercontinental Hotels Group, deployed a private cloud environment leveraging VCE Converged Infrastructure, resulting in reduced delivery times, 25% application performance improvement and an 81% lower cost of deployment.
Speaking about customers, VMworld is a fantastic event that affords us the ability to engage with our valued VCE and VMware mutual customers. At our increasingly popular VCE User Group (VUG) meeting customers gathered to hear from their peers and learn more about how our expanded converged infrastructure portfolio – Blocks, Racks and Appliance – can support their journey to the cloud in ways then before. VCE also held Technical Advisory Board where we had VCE executives and CIOs discussing the major infrastructure projects that they are building out and how key VCE technology innovations will enable customers to get even more business value from their next gen data center solutions.
Another element of our success at the show was leveraging the power of the EMC Federation and our strong relationship with Cisco to illustrate how we are working closely to solve IT organizations’ most critical problems. Our strong partnerships across these organizations was well represented through our joint presentations in each other’s booths, social activity at the event and so much more. And I am only scratching the surface. You can read more about what we were up to with Cisco and EMC. I am excited for what lies ahead as we continue to take on our mutual customer’s business challenges and opportunities with Vblock Systems.
While VMworld US is now officially in the books, the VCE team is back at it to replicate our presence at VMworld 2015 Europe taking place in Barcelona October 12- 15. If you are attending VMworld Europe, please come see us in VCE’s booth P201. Ciao for now!
