Dell EMC VP Envisions IaaS, PaaS And Container Services Running On VMware Cloud Foundation

Dell EMC's software-defined data center road map revolves around providing services on VMware's Cloud Foundation platform.

"We envision infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, container as a service, running on VMware Cloud Foundation, running on VxRack, which is built using our hyper-converged infrastructure appliance, VxRail," said Chad Dunn, vice president of product management and marketing at Dell EMC, in an interview with CRN.

Dunn, an 11-year Dell EMC veteran, is the product leader for Dell EMC's hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) products, responsible for strategy and the technology road map. He said many Dell customers are in different maturity stages in rolling out a software-defined data center (SDDC) strategy.

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"Some are starting on hyper-converged appliances, building out large environments with the intent to move to a VxRack or a Cloud Foundation infrastructure later on. Then we have others that are starting right out of the gate with VxRack SDDC, which includes the Cloud Foundation software – vSAN, vSphere -- and all the components to sort of orchestrate that environment as a system," said Dunn. "That's really what our strategy is about -- how do we make infrastructures like that turnkey and very easy for our customers to get to value quickly on."

The company has a turnkey HCI appliance, VxRail, as well as a rack-scale software-defined solution, VxRack SDDC – both of which are co-engineered with VMware. VMware Cloud Foundation is VMware's unified SDDC platform that brings together VMware vSphere, vSAN, and its software-defined networking product, NSX, into a natively integrated stack to deliver cloud infrastructure.

VxRail is Dell EMC's fastest-growing product with 75 percent of sales being fulfilled by channel partners, according to Dunn. He said the company is enabling partners to sell the HCI offering through certifications and its VxRail Xpert program, which is an exam-based curriculum.

"Once you're in [Xpert], you get early access to a lot of insight information on VxRail, what our product road maps are, what our performance characteristics are so that you have a deeper level of understanding of the technology," said Dunn. "You can more easily offer it to your clients."

Dell EMC was named a Leader in Gartner's first-ever Magic Quadrant for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure this year, ranked No. 2 in execution and No.3 in vision on the quadrant. VMware, which Dell Technologies owns an 82 percent stake in, ranked No. 2 in vision and No. 3 in execution on the quadrant.