Thoughts on EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud
I’ve never been a prolific blogger like others in the virtualization community, but this year was especially bad. One of the reasons is that I’m in a new role with EMC which has changed my focus a bit. Still focused on virtualization, but less so on the business critical apps that I used to write more frequently about and more on hybrid cloud.
The other major change is my involvement with something called EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, or what we refer to as EHC. EHC is more than just marketing – it’s a powerful combination of hardware and software from EMC, software from VMware, and services from EMC to implement the solution. It’s a fully engineered solution that includes more than just out of the box functionality of the products. EMC has created custom workflows and automation to add value to the solution, including things like Backup as a Service integration with Avamar and storage provisioning and integration with EMC ViPR.
My new role at EMC has me focused on helping to make sure that our Professional Services teams have the skills, training, and experience they need to be successful in delivering projects and EHC has become a big part of that. After all, one of the reasons why EHC is resonating with customers is that it’s a complete solution that includes our services to implement it quickly. How quickly? We can go from nothing to a fully functional cloud environment providing Infrastructure as a Service in just 28 days. Customers tell us a project like that often takes them months or longer and they’re often not as successful as they’d like.
Having a focus on Professional Services and not on specific EMC products, my view of the EMC world may be somewhat skewed. With that said, I think the PS portion of EHC is one of the most important parts of the solution. The value of bringing in an experienced PS team is especially evident here, as EHC is a complex solution that involves numerous technologies. I’ve been personally involved in developing the training paths and enablement plans for all EMC PS resources that deliver EHC solutions and can say the caliber of people we’ve put through is quite high. I’m proud to be a part of the EMC PS team.
I’ll share some links below to give you some more information about EHC if you’re interested. You’ll notice that much of it will focus on the technology and capabilities of the EHC solution and you’ll see very little about EMC’s services to go with this. In my mind the PS portion is just as important as the technology itself, and is one of the key things that makes EHC different from similar solutions from other organizations.
Here’s to hoping I get to blog more next year! Hope everyone has a great new year and a prosperous 2015!
Here are some links for more info:
EHC Solution Overview (opens a PDF): https://www.emc.com/collateral/solution-overview/h12476-so-hybrid-cloud.pdf
First in my 3 part series introducing EHC: https://infocus.emc.com/matt-_liebowitz/introducing-emc-hybrid-cloud-part-1-why-hybrid-cloud/
EHC was recently updated to 2.5.1 and this post by Jim Sanzone does a nice job explaining what’s new: http://projectvirtual.com/?p=301