The federated model recently announced by EMC Corporation provides customer solutions and choice for the software-defined enterprise and the new IT agenda of mobile, cloud, big data and social media, transformed by billions of users and millions of apps.
Stephen O’Herlihy, consultant technology advisor at EMC, says each company within the federation is free to execute its mission. “The power of this model is that it allows the EMC companies to grow and penetrate as many markets as possible while offering customers almost unlimited choice,” he says. “Within this framework, there is a shared vision and the companies are aligned to deliver on that overall strategy.”
EMC Information Infrastructure (II), Pivotal, RSA and VMware form a federation of strategically aligned businesses, each focused and free to execute individually or together.
Delon Karrim, senior systems engineer, Advanced Storage Division, EMC Southern Africa, says organisations are dealing with the perpetual need to cut costs in their existing IT environments – spending less on capital equipment and finding efficiencies in staffing models.
“At the same time, there is an opportunity and real need for IT to understand the new web and mobile platforms, and to partner with the business to build new capabilities so that the organisation can be the disruptor, not the disrupted,” he says. “All of this is leading to a new IT agenda that will reduce costs, increase speed for new growth and balance risk.”
Building a software-defined data centre (SDDC) that has automation and self-service will lower the cost of running IT and serve as a foundation for faster, more agile IT. This SDDC will provide the organisation’s private cloud and can be extended to the public cloud, forming a hybrid cloud – the lowest cost way to run IT.
“The new IT agenda is the reason EMC created the Federation,” O’Herlihy says. “EMC, VMware, Pivotal and RSA each have a specific mission, but are strategically aligned to deliver solutions based on the new IT agenda. Through this innovative model, we provide best-of-breed solutions for the new IT agenda and customer choice, with no lock-in.”
The SDDC is the platform of all the solutions, as it is a data centre completely virtualised and automated through software. The SDDC supports traditional enterprise applications and operates them at the lowest possible cost because of automation. The virtualisation platform is the home of policy in the data centre and, through tight integration with the infrastructure, the right infrastructure is provisioned and managed based on workload policy.
According to O’Herlihy, EMC and VMware deliver on the SDDC, with EMC providing storage platforms and data protection, and VMware offering the virtualisation platform, management and automation. “Together, we are partnering in several key areas,” he says.
These include Tier 1 application support, which involves making mission-critical applications run well and ensuring they are protected, as well as visibility and automation, delivering seamless integration so that administrators have all the information they need and that productivity improves across the IT organisation.
In software-defined storage, EMC and VMware deliver the complete spectrum of storage offerings for traditional applications and next-generation cloud applications, enabling companies to run ITaaS with storage automation.
“As you can see the Federation of EMC companies is working extensively to bring advanced solutions to every business in every industry; allowing organisations to capitalise on the new era of application, information, and technology innovation,” Karrim says.
“New companies will emerge to challenge the traditional, new applications will be created to transform the user experience, and new value will be created from information and infrastructure to address the speed and simplicity of tomorrow’s consumer.”
