During a recent customer conversation around application challenges, I found myself going down a deep, technical rabbit hole.
It felt reminiscent of my early years in the EMC Executive Briefing Center. At that time, my team used performance charts to illustrate an EMC solution’s performance versus the competition. Around the same time, EMC announced two new software solutions for our flagship Symmetrix product line—TimeFinder and SRDF. Conversations immediately elevated to solving customer pain points … Y2K, for example.
Conversations like those will raise you from commodity box pusher to valuable problem solver.
I’m not saying the bits and bytes don’t matter to some people—because we know they do matter, but they do not get you in front of the business decision makers.
Consider how this problem solving creates fresh dialogue with an entirely new set of prospects: application owners
For example … Customer X develops a plan to optimize processes or eliminate existing roadblocks or challenges. It is imperative to the business owners that the plan is completed as proposed, and the application then becomes the “face” of that plan.
Ask a few key questions that can help you create new opportunities and establish yourself as a valued problem solver, with help from EMC XtremIO.
Questions that help you get beyond the basics, like:
- What are you trying to accomplish?
- Will this change help bring a new application online sooner?
- Are you looking to provide application testers immediate access to fresh data?
- Will this application enable undisrupted QA testing?
EMC XtremIO provides a solution to some of the most common customer pain points
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and End-User Computing (EUC)
The Customer Need:
Access from anywhere, to applications on the go, and from any device
Common Pain Points:
- The centralization of hundreds (or even thousands) of previously dedicated desktop resources creates extremely random, unpredictable, and “bursty” choke points for the VDI input/output (I/O) profile
- Traditional storage architectures restrict customers from delivering on the promise of VDI/EUC at scale
- Poor user experience and administrative challenges make it unfeasible to extend BYOD (bring your own device) beyond pilot stage
The EMC XtremIO Solution:
- XtremIO delivers better-than-physical-desktop user experience for all user/desktop types
- Advanced data reduction enables incredibly cost-effective deployments—even for full clones
- Rapid desktop provisioning without any I/O “storm” facilitates worry-free scaling from pilot to production (and beyond)
Virtualization
The Customer Need:
Consistent performance and SLAs within a virtualized environment; ability to house mission-critical applications in a central virtualized environment
Common Pain Points:
Inconsistent performance within virtualized environments forces many IT organizations to keep their mission-critical performance-sensitive applications on separate physical silos, and results in:
- Complex operations
- Cumbersome deployments
- Massive infrastructure overprovisioning
- A rigid and unwieldy IT environment (that can’t accommodate changing business needs)
The EMC XtremIO Solution:
- Virtualization of multiple workloads—mixed tier and multiple T-1—on a common storage platform
- Consistent, predictable performance at any scale
- A drastically reduced total storage footprint improves IT agility and speed
- Rich portfolio integration enables critical data center services
Microsoft SQL Server
The Customer Need:
Increased response, efficiency, and workflow agility from expanding, increasingly complex SQL Server databases and applications
Common Pain Points:
- Even as SQL Server applications become larger and more complex, service windows shrink and organizations ask IT departments to cut costs and increase efficiency
- Businesses demand improved response times; and IT administrators and SQL Server database administrators struggle to find solutions to keep up with SLAs and performance metrics, and to increase efficiency and workflow agility
The EMC XtremIO Solution:
- XtremIO delivers unparalleled levels of performance operational efficiency (ease-of-use, low physical space, power consumption, and heat generation)
- Advanced storage array features—including deduplication, thin provisioning, and XtremIO Virtual snapshots—deliver significant benefits compared to traditional implementations
- XtremIO storage systems drive higher consolidation ratios and significantly improve the user experience at the application level … and thus dramatically lower the overall IT infrastructure cost in virtual server, virtual desktop, database, analytics, and business intelligence environments
Dig deeper into each of these customer challenges—and how EMC XtremIO can help
We’ve developed a series of both live and on-demand XtremIO webinars to help you get deeper into the what, why, and how XtremIO can solve each of these common customer challenges and more.
Here are just a few examples of currently available XtremIO on-demand webinars:
- Transforming Desktop Virtualization with Agile All-Flash EUC Solutions for Graphics, DaaS, and More
- Transforming Your Virtual Infrastructure with XtremIO All-Flash Private Cloud, EUC, and DevOps
- Simplification of Microsoft SQL Server and SharePoint Planning and Management
Access all of the on-demand XtremIO webinars, here. Check back often—new content is added regularly.
For more information, tools, and resources, visit the XtremIO Enablement Center.