Jeff Frick and Stu Miniman broadcast live from theCUBE during the 5th EMC World 2014 Summit in Las Vegas, welcoming Chad Dunn, the Senior Director of VSPEX Business Operations.

“What do the announcements at the EMC World mean to the VSPEX line?” was Miniman’s first question.

“Well,” started Dunn, “we have updated 11 of the reference architectures to now include the VNX C3200. That’s the next generation of VNX low range, mid range products. Also all of the Microsoft’s private cloud solutions, VMware solutions and the application solutions all updated to use the VNX C3200 now.  We have brought the Data Domain 2200 which was just announced today, that’s also in the reference architecture as well. So, we have refreshed our data and protection portfolio at the same time.”

Configuring modern networks in the datacenter

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“What’s the mix look like on VSPEX? VNX and VMAX, you can do CISCO and Brocade, you can do Microsoft and VMware — what’s a typical configuration?” asked Miniman.

“What a typical configuration to me, if I look across all the different solutions that we sell and what tends to be moving at the highest volume, it’s configurations that are… VNX 5500 sort of size from a storage footprint perspective. And it’s usually in the area of four to six servers, whether they are Blades or RackMail,” Dunn responded.

“We have done the network switches of course and VMware virtualization seems to be the dominant player from that perspective, and about 25 percent of the time there is also backup included in those solutions as well,” Dunn went on. “That’s typically what these solutions look like… but then we have outliers. We do have other very high-end configurations… that aren’t as common, so we see things on the 5800 line that could run into the millions of dollars from an ASP perspective. So, that’s really all over the place.”

“From your partners’ standpoint, how much fibre channel, and how much Ethernet?” Miniman queried.

“Predominantly Ethernet today because we’re really playing in the mid-market space. Up until the VNX C3200, that was an Ethernet-only product. So, now it has fibre channel front end as well, which has been a surprisingly strong request from our partner and our customer base, particularly in APJ where fiber channel is alive and well,” Dunn replied.

• The network ecosystem

“Does Cisco dominate the fibre channel Ethernet space like they do in the market overall, or do you see a good mix out there?” Miniman quizzed.

“There is certainly the dominant player that we see from an Ethernet attached perspective, it may be not as the market share suggests but it’s either typically Cisco or Brocade in our IP configurations,” was Dunn’s response.

“Is SDN part of the story with VSPX now?” the hosts prodded.

“We have a pretty strong SDN play with VMware and their NXA product, and so we certainly want to leverage that where it’s needed. We don’t see it this much in the mid-market yet, that’s still a fairly high-end solution for very particular use cases, but we expect that to come down pretty rapidly.” Dunn said.

Extending support

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“Can you tell me the progression of what VXPEX support looks like?” Miniman asked.

“Originally when we launched VSPEX, we didn’t do anything special for customer support for configurations, we would certainly honor the cooperative support agreements we have with the other vendors that are part of the ecosystem, but that was it,” Dunn explained.

“Now if you have a problem with your VSPEX solution whether its compute, network, virtualization or storage you can call EMC first. If we can determine that the responsibility or the issue is with another vendor software, we will work with you and open that call ticket on your behalf with that vendor assuming you have the support entitlements to do so, and EMC will stay with you through the whole process until it’s resolved,” Dunn went on. ”

“One of the observations on the market place while almost every vendor out there has converged solutions, EMC really leads with those solutions and it has worked with the channel that helps them train them, educate them, push them,” Minman noted. “When you are out competing in the marketplace, do you find you are still the ones leading the conversation on convergence or are you still competing against built solutions? What does the competitive landscape look like?” he probed.

“I really feel we are leading with that solutions selling message because, it’s one thing to build a converged infrastructure thing that looks and feels like a product, but if your partners don’t have the ability to go out and transact and support like a solution, you are not going to get anywhere.

“And the reason that I think we have been so successful with VSPEX is one; we believe they are superior products. What we also do is we add value to our partners in the reference architectures in the go-to market program, the single point of support, all those things that make them most successful and adds value to those solutions.” Dunn replied.

In the VSPEX pipeline

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“The VSPEX team is showing off mobile solution I believe. What other interesting things does VSPEX team have going on?” Stu Miniman enquired.

“VSPEX is all over the show,” Dunn explained, “we have got presence in about 17 different spots around here and the partner lounge out on the show floor. Where there is some really interesting stuff is in the Avnet booth. The Avnet have their mobile data center solution. This is a fully powered mobile data center. It goes into disaster zones, its fireproof, and its weather proof. So, if you need to stand up a data center in a disaster area you can basically roll this thing out and that’s a VSPEX reference architecture. They are also showing live demos of the VNX C3200 and the Data Domain 2200.”

“What’s getting you excited about the industry at the show in general from a technology standpoint?” was Miniman’s closing question.

“Anything to do with the third platform right now. We are working more as VSPEX is working with our colleagues at Pivotal and now I’m being less exposed to our traditional mid market applications which we love and are used to. But now we are looking at things like GemFire and Cloud Foundry and some of these new technologies that as a technology guy in my career I am really anxious to get engaged within and play with. That’s very interesting to me right now.” Dunn responded.