VCE Unveils New Converged Infrastructure Portfolio

VCE is ramping up its converged infrastructure portfolio with the launch of several new platform and software innovations, including a choice of using either VMware (VMW) NSX or Cisco Systems‘ (CSCO) ACI for their systems.

VCE’s new lineup includes several new solutions, most notably the company’s VxBlock Systems family of converged infrastructure solutions, according to the announcement. VxBlock can be customized with a choice of either Cisco Application Infrastructure or VMware NSX for software-defined networking functionality, according to the announcement. Additional setups are expected to be announced later this year.

While customers have always had the option of implementing VMware NSX after purchasing their Vblock systems, the announcement marks the first time VCE has offered to install the solution directly, according to Chris Sullivan, vice president of Global Channels and Alliances at VCE.

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“From a hardware perspective, Cisco networking is what we use … [but] based on the innovation cycle of that technology as well as customer demand for NSX this was kind of just a natural step for us to ensure that we offered both of those opportunities for customers to choose from,” said Sullivan, in an interview with The VAR Guy.

VCE also unveiled its new Vscale Architecture, which is being billed as a “scale up and scale out” architecture designed to improve simplicity and speed at the data center. Vscale Architecture will allow users to connect to multiple converged infrastructure systems and data center elements to enable integration between storage and Vblock resources.

And finally, VCE customers will have access to Vision Intelligent Operations 3.0, the latest update to the company’s converged infrastructure management software. Version 3.0 is expected to improve operational simplicity by providing customers with a more consistent view thanks to unified intelligence across multiple converged infrastructure systems, according to the announcement. Sullivan said VCE focused on integrating the vRealize suite into Vision to help provide users with a single point of interaction for all of the elements of their infrastructure.

Several existing VCE solutions have received upgrades as well, according to Sullivan, including pre-integrated and pre-validated hardware extensions to allow customers to expand their converged infrastructure with additional storage and compute resources. The new extensions will help ensure current solutions remain compatible with Vblock architecture.

Both the VCE Federation Enterprise Cloud and VCE Foundations for Cisco UCS Director will receive significant improvements as well, which are expected to help customers expand their infrastructure depth and simplify deployment and management of cloud computing, respectively.

The new Vscale portfolio is expected to be available for order in Q2 2015. Additional features for the company’s existing solutions are available now.

“VCE’s mission since inception has been to free IT organizations from expending resources and effort managing infrastructure, so they could deliver next-generation services to their end users,” said Praveen Akkiraju, CEO of VCE, in a statement. “This new set of platforms and solutions represents the first major phase of expansion for the scale and scope of the VCE portfolio and value proposition.”