Stalled Virtualization Projects? – How Xiotech can help you UN-STICK these deployments.
Xiotech is in a huge partner recruitment phase this year. Things have been going just fantastic! However, one problem we are running into is trying to get some of these larger partners to give us the time of day. Shocking I know- who wouldn’t want to carve out 60 mins of their time to talk to “Ziotech” (I didn’t misspell that – it happens to us ALL THE TIME). Once we get our foot in the door it’s usually 20 mins of them explaining that they carry EMC, NetApp, Pillar, HDS, and Compellent, etc. They always explain to us they just can’t take on yet another storage vendor. What’s really interesting is we typically tell them we don’t want to replace any of their current storage offerings. This usually leads to a skeptical look from them 🙂 I usually tell them that we have a very unique ability to “un-stick” Virtual Desktop opportunities. Let me explain a little further.
It never fails- VDI projects seem to get stalled, or simply get stuck in some rut that the prospect or partner can’t get out of. Now, a stuck project can come in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes it’s time and effort, sometime it’s other projects in the way. But the vast majority of the time its Cost/ROI/TCO type things. Not just from a justification point of view, but most of the time from the upfront CAPEX view. This has been especially true with 1000+ seat solutions. Like I said, I just keep hearing more and more about these situations from our partners. What normally follows is, “well the project is on hold due to funding issues.” So how can we differentiate ourselves in this kind of opportunity? Funny you should ask that!!
I typically like to describe our ISE solution as a solution that has a VERY unique ability to do 3 things better than the rest.
#1 – We give you true cost predictability over the life of the project.
Let’s be honest, if you are about to deploy a 5000+ VDI desktop solution you are probably going to do this project over a 3 year time frame right? Even if it’s only 500, why is it that as we look into these solutions further we only see 3 years of maintenance on the most expensive CAPEX which is storage? By the time you get all 5000+ systems up and running it’ll be time for year 4 and 5 maintenance on your storage foundation. If this isn’t your first storage rodeo, then you know that years 4 and 5 can be the most painful in regards to costs. Not to mention, what’s really cool about our solutions is the “Lego” style approach to design. We can tell you what the cost is for each ISE you want to buy, since they are in 3U “blades” you can simply add the number you need to meet whatever metric you have in place and know the cost of each one. As you can see, we do “Cost Predictability” pretty well.
#2 – We give you performance predictability.
With our 3U Emprise 5000 we have the very unique ability to predict performance characteristics. This is very difficult with legacy storage vendors. Their array IOPS pool can swing 80% plus or minus depending on how full from a capacity point of view their solution is. We deliver 348 SPC-1 IOPS per SPINDLE based on 97% capacity utilization. Keep in mind most engineers for legacy storage arrays use 150 to 120 IOPS per spindle. So based on that alone, we can deliver the same performance with ½ the spindles!!
#3 – We can give you capacity predictability.
Because of the linearity of our solution, when you purchase the Emprise 5000 we can tell you exactly how much useable, after RAID capacity you will have available. Best practice useable capacity for our solution is 96% full. That’s where we do all of our performance testing. Compared with the industry average of anywhere from 60% to 80% your capacity “mileage” will vary !!
So why should this be important to solution providers and customers? So back to my VDI comments. If you are in the process of evaluating, or even moving down the path to deploy VDI how important is it for you to fully understand your storage costs when trying to design this out? If I could tell you that you can support 2000 VDI instance in 3U of space, and that 3U of space can hold 19TB’s of capacity and that solution cost $50,000 (I’m pulling this number out of the…..well, air) that could really be a pivotal point in getting your project off the ground don’t you think? Like I said, no one deploys a 5000 seats solution at one time. You do this over a number of years. With our Storage Blades, you can do just that. You simply purchase the one ISE at a time. With its predictable costs, capacity and most importantly, it’s predictable performance you have the luxury of growing your deployment overtime, without having to worry about a huge upfront CAPEX hit. Not to mention a 5 year hardware warranty better aligns with the finance side of the house and their typical 5 year amortization process. No hidden year 4 and 5 Maintenance costs !!
So, if you are looking at a VDI project or you’ve looked at it in the past and just couldn’t justify it, give us a call. Maybe we can help lower your entry costs and get this project unstuck !!
Thanks,
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