Is platform 2.5 the channel's stepping stone to cloud?
MTI's Steve Wiggs reports back from EMC World
I was fortunate to have attended EMC World in Las Vegas earlier this month with some of my MTI colleagues to hear from EMC's executives on the issues that could shape the future of the channel. This year most of the discussion centred on the shift towards ‘third platform' applications - the idea that most of a firm's infrastructure will be delivered entirely through cloud-based solutions.
At the conference, EMC's Jeremy Burton announced that the company was to remain focused on its traditional datacentre operations, albeit with more emphasis on cloud-based storage. Conscious of what the future might hold, yet aware that most of its customers still look to EMC for physical storage arrays, Burton was keen to emphasise what is called ‘platform 2.5', a hybrid approach incorporating both traditional datacentre and cloud.
Platform 2.5 is also a response to customer demand. From conversations with both customers and partners, there is a real demand to simplify and accelerate IT delivery - whether that's through the increased use of software-defined datacentres with Emc ViPR, or through the remarkable growth of EMC's flash arrays.
EMC's headline announcement was the update to its all-flash XtremIO offering, and the VMX3 enhancements, while Burton also emphasised the release of ViPR's source code into the community, encouraging the development of open-source software in response to customer demand. The foundations for the third platform are in place, even if the market is not quite at that stage just yet.
It follows feedback from EMC's expansive partner network that end users are still to embrace the third platform. The continued growth of VNX and VMAX products reflects this. Change will be gradual, but as demand for flash storage and products such as ViPR continues to grow, partners will begin to reach the third platform with customers.
Steve Wiggs (pictured above) is principal solutions architect at integrator MTI