It’s also the case that the emergence of upstart software vendors like Nexenta, Atlantis Computing, DataCore Software, CloudByte and Maxta, hasn’t gone unnoticed by the traditional storage vendors or, as Maner likes to refer to them, the “MESS (massively expensive storage systems) mafia”. The likes of EMC, HP, IBM, NetApp and Hitachi have all jumped onto the SDS bandwagon although, technically, they could be described as stretching the definition of software defined by seeking to offer software that commoditises their own hardware rather than all hardware.
The market is also further muddied by the emergence of software vendors wrapping their product in with commodity hardware and selling them as appliances. Companies like Nutanix, Tintri, Solidfire, Nimble and Zadara Storage. Perhaps the most high profile of these companies is Nutanix, which recently struck an agreement with Dell for the hardware giant to supply a converged server, storage and networking appliance using Nutanix’s software.
The company’s profile is helped by the fact one of its co-founders was a lead scientist at Google which has developed its own Web-scale data centre architecture. The vendor claims Nutanix’s Virtual Computing Platform “integrates high-performance compute and enterprise-class storage into a single, easy-to-deploy appliance that completely eliminates the need for network-based storage architectures, such as SAN or NAS”.
“It was a difficult argument to bring to the channel to say people can buy any hardware, put software on it and manage any way they wanted to” – Francis O’Haire, Data Solutions
Talking at VMWorld Barcelona 2013, Nutanix vice president of channel Steve Kaplan said that although virtualised compute only addresses 30% of the problem, “storage is the bigger problem. When you have to go from server to storage, it’s still a slow process and there are issues in scaling. You have to manage it and it’s very expensive and complex. It’s not very resilient.”
And he was at pains to point out that SDS was not just about more flash or a faster CPU “but an entirely new way of approaching the data centre. Google did it 10 years ago”. The vendor is 100% channel focused and Kaplan claimed it was gaining traction with partners that have relationships with the likes of EMC, Cisco and NetApp but “have the flexibility and vision to have their clients’ best interests at heart. This is very inexpensive for a reasonable sized organisation”.
In the wake of the Dell announcement, Kaplan was keen to assuage any concerns that the vendor could take sales away from Nutanix’s existing partners, claiming it had structured “the Dell OEM agreement in a manner that gives everyone a level playing field. Dell’s pricing is in parity with that of the rest of our channel”. He also described the deal as “an important step to help accelerate enterprise embracement of Web-scale converged infrastructure. As was the case with virtualisation, this will benefit all Nutanix partners”.
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