Time for MSPs to Monitor Vblock Data Centers?

vblock

According to Nimsoft, the company’s Nimsoft Monitoring Solution (NMS) now offers “complete monitoring for private cloud Vblock Infrastructure Packages.” For data centers that use Vblock, Nimsoft claims service providers and enterprises will be able to “quickly discover and address the root causes of issues that can impact critical IT services.”

Think Bigger

There’s a bigger story here. It involves the looming data center showdown between Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. Cisco, as you may recall, touts a Unified Computing System (UCS) that integrates storage, networking and servers in the data center. Taken one step further, Vblock essentially marries Cisco’s data center initiatives with storage and virtualization initiatives at EMC and VMware, respectively.

Nimsoft certainly isn’t choosing sides in the data center wars. But Nimsoft, owned by CA Technologies, certainly believes in Vblock and wants to get ahead of the competitive curve. As service providers begin their vBlock deployments, Nimsoft obviously wants to be the preferred monitoring platform for those settings.

Admittedly, Nimsoft’s Vblock move may not have major immediate implications for small MSPs. After all, Cisco only works with a select few service providers and VARs on the Vblock effort.

Still, those Vblock partners represent aggressive solutions providers that are willing to (A) bet heavily on Cisco and (B) adopt emerging architectures before they go mainstream. And Nimsoft seems to have found a niche to exploit. According to a prepared Nimsoft statement:

If Vblock emerges as a data center standard, Nimsoft appears to have the inside edge on key service provider relationships.

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