Selling the converged stack

Converged infrastructure is the primary way forward for both channel and vendor, believes Andrew McDade

For years, VARs as well as SIs have been building component stacks for customers. Extra processing, storage or infrastructure can be tacked on via a new appliance. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, companies that have relied on this strategy for a number of years now struggle to manage their infrastructure, which may be operating far below peak efficiency.

Traditionally, the channel has integrated multiple technologies from multiple vendors, leaving servicing in the hands of the customer. Such a conglomeration of components can lead to an error-prone infrastructure, governed by multiple support models and warranties.

However, setting up a robust private cloud without the installation and management costs associated with large, multi-vendor datacentres has resulted in a need for simple, off-the-shelf, converged infrastructure offerings. Even the oldest, most well-established enterprises may look to trade individual component performance for factory-integrated efficiency.

This is a significant turning point for datacentre infrastructure. Vendors are now racing to ship converged infrastructure devices via the channel.

When server, storage, networking, compute, software, management and service contract are packed into a single SKU, customers receive an "in-the-box" multi-purpose proposition. Parts of the stack can be specifically engineered to work together efficiently or can be tested and optimised in multiple configurations and environments to ensure optimum efficiency.

This approach may initially seem counter-productive when compared to the exhaustively bespoke legacy infrastructures enterprise IT has been used to, but in fact the converged infrastructure approach is just as flexible, incredibly scalable and even more intuitive.

The infrastructure is installed as is, then configured virtually through a flexible, integrated life cycle management interface.

A pre-integrated, pre-configured and pre-tested package offers other advantages. The granular orchestration eases the process of selecting, delivering, producing, operating and upgrading the infrastructure. Time to production is also reduced.

Convergence is not simply about orchestrating a hardware and software bundle; the service contract is also vital because it should ensure the entire life cycle of the offering as a single entity is supported at a vendor level.

Of course, this can change where the value and revenue is added in the distribution chain, and resellers may resist this the most, having made their name creating and selling bespoke packages for years.

However, for every reseller big enough to routinely build and license its own infrastructure packages, there are five smaller ones looking for ways to increase the productivity of their sales team. These resellers will benefit the most from taking on the delivery of converged, vendor-backed offerings, as opposed to simply selling a range of barcoded boxes.

Keep having conversations with customers, as feeding information back through the channel to the vendor will help ensure the success of new product iterations. And vendors that previously sold only a single part of the infrastructure stack, such as storage, must evolve or fall behind as customers begin asking for complete services, not individual products.

Andrew McDade is enterprise product marketing manager at Fujitsu