Paveen Akkiraju, newly appointed CEO of VCE was on theCube at VMworld 2012.  As CEO, Akkiraju brings a wealth of experience from Cisco Systems, where his role had been running the mobility business for the networking giant.  As the datacenter is going through a phenomenal transformation, VCE is working on evolving their strategy, and Akkiraju’s experiences that include defining cloud access  infrastructure and knowledge of customer, user and enterprise cloud access strategies will be key in that evolution.

Akkiraju states that the Vblock product is still revolutionary, and is proven by tremendous successes, and unmatched capabilities.  As a pioneer of converged infrastructure, they are moving forward with innovations and the company is ready to take the next step to abstract converged infrastructure to the next level.  By delivering software and service capabilities that utilize the converged infrastructure as a platform, the strategy is expected to take the company into a new phase.

The financial value of VCE is approaching a billion dollars, the return to VCE investors however is realize in the growth that is being delivered to each in their respective segments.   For example Cisco’s UCS platform would probably have a more difficult time to engage on its own than on a unified product.  They have enabled a different type of conversation that speaks to the entire datacenter.  The expectation of VCE is to build on this value, continue innovation and go forward.  They have delivered tremendous growth in new markets and have also met all financial goals set by their investors.  As they continue to drive growth and foster their special brand of disruption, they expect to continue they hyper-growth phase in terms of customer base, and product offering.

Reacting to the relationship between the major investors, namely the notion that EMC and Cisco are pulling back from the venture, Akkiraju clarifies the status.  Cisco and EMC are committed to VCE as the only path to delivering infrastructure.  There is always potential for major technology to support initiatives that seemingly cross over existing relationships.  VCE is focused on Fortune 500 type of customers.  For converged infrastructure, VCE is the only route to market.  The investors remain committed to delivering the technologies that help build the products.

VCE sees themselves as a fit in a software defined datacenter.  They are committed to a direction of developing new and improved software capability to abstract infrastructure and create the choice and elasticity that customers will gain value from.  With the new wave of converged product vendors, such as the surge of flash-enabled products, VCE maintains that their competitive advantage is being the best in class.  With a history in the industry, their converged infrastructure play has been seasoned through many successful deliveries and history of fantastic customer experiences.  With a growing base of partners that are certified on Vblock, the company’s strategy revolves on fostering these relationships, enabling profitability, and putting the best product set possible in their hands.  The course for vision and leadership is set to continue building on amazing customer experiences, utilizing their self-developed talent base in sales and services.  Their reach is proving successful with more and more multinational customers coming on the scene as well.