VSPEX At Your Service

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We’ve introduced VSPEX solutions to virtualize your data centers, run your mission-critical applications and deploy virtual desktop infrastructure. These solutions make it simple to deploy workloads on your terms – and the numbers back it up: Gartner recently named VSPEX the industry’s #1 Integrated Reference Architecture System.   So what’s next?

We’re automating VSPEX.

Powered by either Microsoft System Center or VMware vCloud Suite the new VSPEX solutions for Infrastructure-as-a-Service dramatically simplify the process of provisioning application infrastructure by empowering users to do it themselves via self-service portals.

IT administrators and control freaks don’t need to worry. The same self-service portal meters precisely how much resource is being used to support each request, calculates costs and charges the requesting department for their use of resources according to your business policies. Now IT knows exactly who is using what and what it costs.

With the need to manually provision applications and virtual infrastructure, data center professionals can shift focus to more strategic IT (and more interesting) initiatives that open new revenue opportunities for the business.

Slide 1

It sounds good in theory, but how about an example: say a program team (maybe the VSPEX Team inside of EMC) has a project where many employees need access and ability to edit a common set of documents. To support such a requirement, they’d need an instance of Microsoft SharePoint. With the new VSPEX solutions they’d simply go to a self-service portal to request an instance of SharePoint supporting the required number of users. The portal itself would then check business policies, provision a SharePoint instance (compute, network, storage, back up and retention policies) add the appropriate users from our Active Directory, and notify the users. There is no sizing, planning or manual provisioning required – it all happens automatically and without any intervention from an IT administrator – no expertise needed.  When the instance of SharePoint is no longer needed, it and all the resources supporting it are automatically returned back to the pool to be made available for future user requests.

That makes it a win, win, win, win – well let’s say a surplus of wins.

While we’re on the topic of winning, customers are already delivering Infrastructure-as-a-Service through VSPEX. VSPEX enables Surrey Satellite Technology to deliver on their strategy of automating virtualization– allowing people to provision their own environments from pre-defined templates – which gets satellites into SPACE (the final frontier) that much faster.  Live long and automate!

Slide 2

And, while we’re talking about automating VSPEX for customers, I might as well mention how we’re delivering a different type of automation to channel partners that package and deliver VSPEX: we’ve made the VSPEX Sizing Tool more powerful than ever. Not only can partners now size end user computing workloads as part of a VSPEX, but also the appropriate backup and data protection technologies as well – all from one tool.

You ask where we’re going next? Well, what next do you want? Tell me below in the comments.

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About the Author: Chad Dunn

Chad Dunn has been with EMC and Dell Technologies for over 15 years. He currently leads APEX Portfolio Management across Dell, driving the transformation of Dell’s industry-leading product portfolio to a cloud-like as a service consumption model and experience for our customers. Prior to APEX, Chad led the Product Management organization for Dell's multi-billion dollar Hyperconverged and Converged Infrastructure portfolio. There, he built and led the Product Management team that created VxRail, Dell’s flagship HCI product now recognized as number one in this rapidly growing market. Prior to his work in Hyperconverged Infrastructure, he created and led EMC's VSPEX reference architecture program, that generated over $2B in incremental revenue for EMC and its partners. Chad also worked in EMC's Emerging Technologies group and held leadership positions for several start-up companies in the Boston area.
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