
Ready Is Ready
Scale Computing CEO Jeff Ready said his fast-growing hyper-converged infrastructure vendor is eating the lunch of competitors like VMware, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Nutanix through automation and simplicity. Customers of VMware and Nutanix, Ready says, also have to deal with what he calls VMware’s “vTax” and Nutanix’s “NuTax.”
“When our partners are out there and selling these types of solutions, the elimination of VMware from the stack is key,” said Ready in an interview with CRN. “The cost of vTax is big, but the real cost is in the ongoing administration of those systems. Over 50 percent of every IT budget is humans. That’s the real cost. To that extent, Nutanix doesn’t solve that problem. I would say there’s a ‘NuTax’ and a ‘vTax.’”
Scale Computing, whose HC3 solution made CRN’s 10 Coolest Hyper-Converged Systems Of 2018 list, reported record sales in 2018 with hundreds of new customers and channel partners. “We effectively more than doubled the size of our channel partner base last year. We expect to double it again this year,” said Ready. The CEO talks to CRN about growth expectations in 2019, hyper-converged product pipelines and replacing the competition.