For IT organizations to compete against public cloud services they must deliver services to end-users that duplicate the basic advantages of the public cloud, including business user self-service access to logical resource pools of compute, network and storage optimized for lower-cost operations. These must be available on demand with the flexibility to allow users to increase or decrease capacities as needed to meet changing business needs. This requires highly automated management of those pools.

Virtualization and software-defined technologies were a good first step toward this vision, writes Wikibon Senior Analyst Stuart Miniman (@Stu) in his latest published analysis, “Evolving Converged Infrastructure Towards True Private Cloud”.

Virtualization by itself, however, is not enough. Nor is traditional outsourcing (my mess for less). Infrastructure must be delivered as a complete solution with a single point of purchase/support/maintenance/upgrade. Management automation must eliminate the need for manual optimization and configuration of components and obviate the need for the traditional IT vertical organization covering compute, storage and networking. It must be freed to focus on higher value activities.

Converged infrastructure is a step toward that goal, allowing infrastructure to be managed as units including compute, storage and networking at the rack level.

VCE Company, LLC, is now making the final step toward that vision of infrastructure as a logical, user-accessible set of resource pools, with VCE Vision. Based on VCE Vscale, a high-speed network backbone based on Cisco Systems Inc.’s Nexus Technology, VCE Vision replaces the concept of the individual VCE Vblock with an expandable virtualized environment that can extend across the data center.

Tools like VCE Vision are the underpinning of true private cloud solutions, Miniman writes. They shift part of the burden of infrastructure operations to the platform and  vendor, support automated upgrades to allow for continuous operations and monitor the overall health of the infrastructure.

The full Professional Alert provides a full discussion of VCE Vscale and analysis of the advantages of moving to it from Vblock. Wikibon believes that the introduction of VCE Vision and Vscale, along with expected future enhancements, will accelerate users down the path to true private cloud.

Figure ©2016 Wikibon