The sometimes underestimated VCE alliance of VMware, Cisco and EMC had 50% year-over-year growth in 2013 and surpassed $1B in annual revenues. It has 800+ customers in 57 countries and has sold 1,700 Vblocks. That growth verifies Wikibon’s forecast that converged infrastructure will account for two-thirds of infrastructure sales by 2017, writes Wikibon Principal Research Contributor Stuart Miniman in “VCE Drives Simplification Past $1B”. VCE is creating its own culture, delivering simple converged systems from Cisco and EMC piece-parts that break down traditional IT organization (ITO) silos, allowing CIOs to streamline their organizations and save money.

VCE has expanded its portfolio while maintaining sufficient standardization to support configuration upgrades as a single unit, Miniman writes. VCE has a much higher update rate than competing products. It is adding “Vblock Integrated Solutions” as bolt-on components with seamless support. Its one weakness versus competitors IBM and Oracle is that it does not sell bundled applications.

VCE sales can open doors for eventual introduction of software-led infrastructure based on Cisco ACI network virtualization, EMC’s ViPR for software-led storage and the customer’s choice of hypervisor. VCE supports multiple hypervisors.

VCE has a strong future, writes Miniman, in part because it is the fastest growing revenue source for both Cisco and EMC and is on track to become a $1B line of business for each partner in two years. Last year VCE received 45 patents and launched eight new products.

Miniman and Wikibon Co-Founder David Vellante discuss VCE in more detail in the video embedded below. Miniman writes that CIOs should look to converged infrastructure and public cloud solutions to simplify and automate their computing platforms and reorganize their staffs. When considering converged infrastructure, they should not discount VCE.

As with all Wikibon research, this entire Professional Alert is available without charge on the Wikibon Web site. IT professionals are invited to register for free membership in the Wikibon community, which allows them to participate in Wikibon research and publish their own questions, tips, and Professional Alerts.

Photo courtesy VCE