I’m usually not a very controversial writer but this point has been bugging me today. We’ve all heard about the VMware-Cisco-EMC alliance and how they have begun selling their vBlocks. Let not forget Oracle’s acquision of Sun (which I read referred to as Sunacle – hilarious). Sunacle will be able to sell hardware and a lot of software combined. Now, just today, I read an article about Microsoft teaming with HP to build unified solutions for datacenters. Solutions with servers, networking, storage and, of course, Microsoft software. I definitely think there are some advantages to this. From a support standpoint, all of these solutions will be rock solid. All of the hardware and software in use is known by the support staff. This removes a vast number of variables that we introduce when we architect our own solutions in our datacenters. They will be much easier to troubleshoot and should be more reliable overall.
But what if we want to change our vendor? Many of us have done this in the past. Ever changed your storage vendor? Ever change your server hardware vendor? Many of us know the pains involved to do so. We have to learn new tools, new ways of configuring, monitoring and managing our infrastructure. We may have to migrate applications or data to the new pieces of the datacenter. This can be quite an undertaking requiring some dedicated project management, months of implementation work and hours of staff training. All of that if you chose a new vendor for your infrastructure. Now, what if you had to replace your storage, networking, server and virtualization vendor all at the same time? What would that project look like? Would you do it?
If Microsoft and HP decide to release Hyper-Cells (or whatever they may call them). What if I decide I don’t like HP storage? What options do I have then? If I change the storage, is the rest of the solution supported? What if I decide I don’t like any of it? Will I still be free to choose the pieces of my infrastructure that I want?
I think the unified solutions have some great benefits to them. I’m just not sure I’m ready for that kind of commitment…
January 13th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
I don’t really see this as a problem. Keep in mind that these solutions are geared towards only a portion of the market. There will be plenty of people that will still be mixing and matching solutions as they always have. Therefore if you decide to buy a vBlock and later replace the storage with NetApp, you will be in the same boat as the guy down the street who bought UCS, VMware and NetApp storage to start with.
Rod
January 13th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Dave,
You’re spot on. We are moving away from best of breed solutions to multi-vendor stacks (ala like the days of mainframes).
I see this movement as being in the best interest of the vendors and not the consumers as it results in tech lock-in and as we know advances in technology can come at any time and from any where.
January 14th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
I absolutely agree. Virtualization has enabled us to create solutions from interchangeable building blocks that give us the flexibility to change one component for another with much less time and effort than was once required. Moving towards vendor specific stacks is moving in the wrong direction as far as I’m concerned.
Of course this started as a tactic for Cisco to use their network footprint to wedge their way into the compute space. Other vendors are forced to compete against that by providing their own end-to-end stack. But the side benefit I think they all see in this tactic is that it makes a customer much more locked into their solution and it enhances their professional services offerings by giving them an end-to-end stack that their engineers can focus on.
January 15th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Possibly but unlikely. Companies like HP and IBM have a mentality to sell anything to anybody. For example, it is not uncommon for them to sell Dell computers if that is what the customer wants.
This is just a deal to make sure the they can lflog anything that the customer asks for (whether they need it or not).
January 20th, 2010 at 12:48 am
Good observation as always Dave! I think that many of these new “alliances” are going to try to tout the TCO/ROI they can bring (regardless of how they actually calculate the numbers:) as the “wash” benefit of the cost to switch from a competing platform/architecture. They will also often “throw-in” training to ease the pain of a vendor switch if necessary…BTW, good seeing you again last week! Enjoy the weather! I have a strange urge to order some Vytorin right now for some odd reason…:)
February 2nd, 2010 at 7:55 am
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February 2nd, 2010 at 11:42 pm
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February 4th, 2010 at 8:55 pm
Great article. There’s a lot of good information here, though I did want to let you know something – I am running Redhat with the circulating beta of Firefox, and the layout of your blog is kind of bizarre for me. I can read the articles, but the navigation doesn’t function so great.