Moving Beyond VMWare: Trust, Innovation, And The Future Of IT Infrastructure

Scale Computing: Trust, Innovation, and the Future of IT Infrastructure. Brought to you by Scale Computing. I'm your host, Kena Johnson from The Channel Company. Today, we're going to learn why Scale Computing can make the path to virtualization simple, secure, and reliable. To discuss this further, I'm joined by Mitch Etchason from Scale Computing. Mitch, thank you so much for joining us. Mitch Etchason Thanks for having me. Kena Johnson Virtualization Concerns. With IT infrastructure costs on the rise, why is it important to find the best solution for virtualization? Mitch Etchason Infrastructure reliability is really crucial to the overall success of an IT department. Typically, that's where all of their on premises, business critical applications run. And so, many IT departments really need a solution that is ultra reliable, but also easy to manage and maintain. Because just maintaining the infrastructure side of their department is not, you know, their only job, and so it’s really important to have a solution that they trust. And no, we'll keep their applications running, but allow them to spend time with other, you know, daily tasks that they are tasked with as a part of their job. So, it's really the bedrock of an IT organization, but something that you don't want to or are able to spend all of your time managing. Now, speaking of virtualization, why are some VMware users considering alternatives? It's an interesting question, particularly at this point in time. As I'm sure, you know, you've heard and many of the people on this call have heard, Broadcom recently acquired VMware from Dell and with that acquisition, there have been a lot of changes and uncertainty about the future of VMware. And so many customers are just wondering how sustainable it is over the long term. Even in the first few months since the acquisition, we've seen big changes. For example, VMware has changed their partner program, and as a result, in February, a lot of customers trusted IT consultants and partners may not be able to sell VMware, or, and if they do, maybe in a more limited capacity. And so, one, that is a concern, because a lot of customers really value that partnership and guidance from their own partner connections. And then, even, you know, VMware has signaled that they are going to put a much bigger focus than in the past on their large customers. And so, kind of similar to those changes in the channel, VMware has also announced that they're taking their top 2,000 partners direct and not through the IT channel. Which, you know, even though the majority of customers may not be directly impacted by that, it does signal that one, the approach to the channel may be different, and then two, there really is a concerted effort to focus on the very, very large partners. Then finally, they've been mixing up the product line. There was a consolidation of their software subscriptions and feature packages in December. And there's a result, there's a reshuffling of,you know, what license will you need to subscribe to...You know, what features are you used to in your existing license that may not force you into a higher end license? And also, VMware recently ended sale of all their perpetual licenses, which results often in pretty high renewal costs for those customers that, over the next few months, will need to switch to VMware subscription.