Today’s HyperFlex version updates from Cisco come almost a year to the day of its launch. The updates are important for organizations — many of which are Veeam customers —interested in the benefits of all-in-one compute, storage, network and virtualization technologies.
Veeam’s relationship with Cisco has continued to strengthen. And last week’s news about our integration with Cisco HyperFlex has made it even stronger.
At just one-year-old with about 1,000 customers to its name, many of our Veeam customers now view Cisco HyperFlex as an important business platform. We’ve watched the rapid growth of HyperFlex since late 2016, and we are certain that the following new announcements will accelerate that growth even more.
Bridging the Availability Gap with Cisco
Veeam has worked closely with Cisco since 2013, when we created joint solutions for Cisco’s UCS server technology and Veeam Availability Suite. More recently, we’ve been asked to work on a set of Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs). These are essentially blueprints for customers providing a faster return on investment, assured performance and continuous innovation.
CVDs are a big deal. Not every vendor gets a CVD, and right now, Veeam is the first data protection vendor doing this with Cisco Hyperflex. CVDs require an investment and commitment from Cisco and they’ve now done a few with us. This collaboration illustrates the continued growth of our relationship with Cisco over the past few years.
‘Hype-worthy’ hyperconvergence
We don’t just believe in Cisco here. We also see the strengths of the hyperconverged integrated systems (HCIS) market. And, we’re not alone. Gartner expects the HCIS market to be worth almost $5 billion by 2019.
As organizations reassess their capabilities for digital transformation, embracing a hybrid cloud strategy is a common path. Hyperconvergence is also becoming a foundation for on-premises and private cloud deployments.
With a keen focus on all IT expenditures by organizations across the globe, it will likely take some time for these same organizations to make the move from legacy to hyperconverged systems. The benefits are there however, and they are very real. In addition, the growth of workloads will also continue to push this agenda.
Cisco’s Global Cloud Index forecasts that overall data center workloads will more than double by 2.6x from 2015 to 2020, while cloud workloads will more than triple by 3.2x over the same period.
If you’re an executive reading this, you’ll be pleased to hear that the economic benefits of hyper-converged systems are favorable in terms of both CapEx (capital expenditures) and OpEx (operational expenditures). This adds up to a valuable opportunity for businesses and the teams they serve.
Making multi-cloud environments ‘Available’
Maintaining Availability across hybrid cloud, converged or hyperconverged environments is not easily achieved. Last week, our news announced how Veeam will now operate deeper on the Cisco HyperFlex platform, meaning businesses can realize, not only the increased efficiency and adaptability benefits of Cisco HyperFlex and the computing power of Cisco UCS, but by integrating with Veeam, businesses can ensure that data remains available 24.7.365 across their hybrid-cloud environments.
Veeam’s Availability Report shows that three quarters of enterprises recognize they have areas that need addressing. It also shows that they intend to address these areas within 12 months. It isn’t easy to get the okay to divert funds for investing in an infrastructure that is currently perceived as “good enough.” Despite these challenges and constraints, we are still hearing positive news from customers that there is a desire and action to invest in their infrastructures. However, the clock is ticking.
One way we hear about these investments is with the customer conversations we’ve been having about Availability, specifically in the roles played by cloud and cloud-based services such as Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). For enterprise businesses looking to address DR and also manage scale and capacity, we are seeing hyperconvergence become a popular route. Could it be the right route for your business?
To learn more about the newest updates, sign up for the Cisco HyperFlex TechWise TV broadcast on March 22, here.