Subscribe

Coalition unveils next-gen data centre

Alex Kayle
By Alex Kayle, Senior portals journalist
Johannesburg, 19 Aug 2010

VMware, Cisco and NetApp have formed a coalition to roll out a virtualised data centre solution to South African businesses, in order to strengthen their position in the cloud computing market.

The solution is called the dynamic data centre model and it's aimed at boosting cost efficiencies and management within the data centre, by providing a single unified architecture through IT consolidation across the enterprise.

The partnership is not strictly new, as the three companies have been working together informally for around 10 years. However, they say technology has matured to such a stage that the time is now right to create a formal coalition. This will enable them to provide a solution that acts as a foundation for businesses beginning their journey into cloud computing and IT-as-a-service, they add.

Bytes System Integration has been selected as the sole distributor to deliver the virtualised data centre model to the local market.

Virtualisation of everything

According to Patrick Hastings, divisional MD of Bytes Systems Integration, the question is not how to virtualise, but when. He says the model endorses “virtualisation of everything” through the consolidation of services, elimination of 90% of network ports and cables, and the increase of utilised storage by 50%.

Hastings says: “The future of technology is moving to the cloud and whether or not you do it now, or later, you will need to embrace it as the future way of working.”

He explains that traditional data centre technology was complex and built around technology silos that were not well integrated and resulted in under utilisation.

According to a statement released by Bytes, the virtualised dynamic data centre incorporates the Cisco unified computing system, which reduces the number of network switches and integrates resources. NetApp integrates multiple storage streams onto a single platform while VMware vSphere provides a centralised hub to take the technology securely into the cloud.

According to VMware regional director for southern Africa, Chris Norton, the VCN virtualised data centre is the only solution that can provide secure end-to-end multi-tenancy.

This is where a single instance of software runs on a server, serving multiple client organisations or tenants. This shared infrastructure aims to provide increased security, high availability and cost efficiencies.

Norton says: “In the past 10 years, we've been talking about centralisation and consolidation. Virtualisation is a mature technology and is a critical component of the journey towards virtualisation. Around 95% of applications can be virtualised today.”

Integrate to simplify

According to John Rollason, NetApp senior manager for produce, alliance and solutions marketing in EMEA, around 70% of an IT budget is focused on keeping the lights on which limits funds allocated for innovation.

“This partnership aims to enable organisations to build a single architecture that responds faster to challenging business requirements and to reduce overall data centre hardware, operating, cooling and maintenance costs by 50%.”

Rollason says next-generation data centres are service-oriented. “One of the biggest trends in the industry is the fact that business is motivating vendors to partner to integrate IT to solve business problems.

“Our partnership is based on a mutual open partner ecosystem, and without this partnership we would not have the support agreements in place in order to resolve interoperability issues.”

Brendon Boden, Cisco manager of data centre global service delivery teams, says: “Cisco is able to consolidate the network to run several cables over one fibre-over-Ethernet cable. This simplifies the network and reduces storage capacity and provides shared control and efficiency across the entire data centre.”

Share