Ditch the digital duct tape
Tom Corrigan, sales director of Avnet Technology Solutions UK, explains why the channel is perfectly positioned to take advantage of new modular hyper-converged systems
The channel is buzzing with terms such as the software-defined data centre, converged systems, hybrid cloud and more recently, hyper-converged infrastructure.
But what does it all mean and what is the difference between converged and hyper-converged systems?
Most importantly; how can the UK channel develop strategies that drive profitable growth from this technology sector?
Analyst predictions are suggesting 150 per cent market growth over 2015 and beyond and this dramatic growth has seen a large number of technology start-ups delivering very capable solutions focussed in this area.
Equally as exciting is the breadth of emerging technologies being launched from established vendors. Alongside this vendor push we are seeing significant volumes of requests from business partners and their end-user communities around the delivery of integrated platforms to manage new application deployments rather than the provision of disparate compute, network and storage systems in legacy fashion.
In line with this change in demand, reference architectures and converged systems have emerged as pre-defined combinations of server, storage and network solutions to help simplify platform design for what are often fairly complex workload requirements.
Hyper-converged infrastructure takes this to the next level and offers a fully integrated platform across compute, network, storage and hypervisors that are designed, configured and delivered as a single appliance.
This modular design means they are quick to design, simpler to deploy and can be scaled out by adding more appliances as required. So what does all this mean to business partners looking to broaden their capabilities beyond selling compute systems, storage arrays and perhaps introducing a hypervisor for virtualisaton?
With potentially simplified technology for end-users, in terms of design and deployment, now is the time for partners to expand their skills to include the application stack and the delivery of margin-rich services to support a hyper-converged infrastructure.
By taking this approach, opportunities will open up around private cloud and application consulting in addition to application deployment. These are the areas where the best margin opportunities reside for the channel community. However, the first step to hyper-converged is to carefully choose which vendors to partner with.
Which eco-systems offer the most benefits?
While hyper-converged is an emerging technology it has already been validated by many established vendors. The building blocks of most hyper-converged platforms may not yet be one size fits all, but certainly one size fits many.
Within our global markets Avnet is already seeing this change and we feel that now is the time to look beyond the digital duct tape that holds disparate hardware and software stacks together and consider a more consolidated approach to delivering applications and related services.
The strategic relationships distribution partners hold with leading technology providers gives them a huge head start with access to technology that best fits customer requirements.
Look for a distributor with a dedicated technical and sales team in-house focussed only on converged platforms and the ability to build systems to order. There is a huge amount of help out there to enable the channel to make a proactive switch toward diversification and differentiation and distribution is the best place to start.