A converged system is a win for everybody involved – vendors, ISVs and enterprise IT — and the further up the stack the appliance reaches the better for all concerned, writes Wikibon CTO David Floyer (see figure). These single managed entities (SMEs) reduce the number of elements to manage, increase savings, decrease time-to-value and allow internal IT to duplicate public cloud economics.

In his latest analysis focused on SMEs, Floyer compares a traditional VMware white box system with a Lenovo Group Ltd.-Nutanix, Inc., VMware Appliance and the Lenovo-Nutanix Acropolis appliance, including application migration and three years of maintenance. The analysis shows the Acropolis appliance is the least expensive at $205,000 and has a time-to-value of eight days, compared to $339,000 and 39 days for the white box. The Lenovo-Nutanix-VMware system falls in the middle at $290,000 and 11 days.

However, Floyer argues, the most important reasons for using the converged appliance aren’t cost savings as much as they are agility, availability and the quality of the application that can be delivered to the business. The short installation time allows IT to try different approaches and either fail fast or succeed.

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Graphic © 2014 Wikibon, div. SiliconAngle Media