VCE Vblock Systems and HP Converged Infrastructure Introduction

Transcription

1 T o p l i n e S t r a t e g y G r o u p September 2013 Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE Vblock Systems and HP Converged Infrastructure Introduction In today s connected world, IT is at the heart of business. It powers integrated supply chains, e-commerce, global distribution networks and every other mission critical business process. As globalization and ever-increasing competitive pressure have accelerated the pace of business, business leaders have turned to IT to increase agility and speed of innovation. The powers of virtualization and, increasingly, cloud computing have been central to operating at this accelerated pace. IT professionals can now spin up new logical servers in minutes rather than the weeks or months it used to take to physically deploy new hardware. Data centers have achieved a level of unparalleled utility and functionality but at the same time these virtualization and cloud technologies have created an age of unprecedented complexity. Even without virtualization, IT s administrative burden has been growing rapidly. Every few months there are new generations of hardware of ever-increasing sophistication that need to be configured and deployed. Virtualization multiplies this burden exponentially. On top of configuring each component, each virtual machine must be provisioned with storage, compute power and networking. The result: over the last 10 years, while server hardware costs have actually declined, virtualization has led to the number of logical servers quadrupling and administrative costs tripling. 1 It has now reached the point that administrative costs are crowding out innovation. According to a 2011 IDC study, just keeping the lights on (system planning, deploying, maintaining) takes up 77 percent of IT s budget while only 23 percent goes to supporting business innovation. 2 Converged Infrastructure Frees Up Resources for Innovation VCE and HP were among the first vendors to recognize that there was a better way than the conventional approach to data center infrastructure where IT departments build custom systems from individual components. In 2009, both companies announced their first converged infrastructure (CI) initiatives. Converged infrastructure takes compute, network and storage components and integrates them into a single, cohesive pool that is engineered, manufactured and supported by the vendor as a unified system. Furthermore, the entire system is maintained, supported and upgraded by the vendor throughout the system s entire lifecycle. In the ideal case, these fully integrated, vendor-delivered CI systems greatly reduce the administrative burden on IT managers by completely changing how systems are designed, deployed, optimized, maintained, supported and upgraded. 1 IDC White Paper. Converging the Datacenter Infrastructure: Why, How, So What? May Ibid The Administrative Burden of Keeping the Lights On Uses 77% of IT Resources I T E x p e n d i t u r e s 23% 30% 24% 23% Innovation Monitoring & Maintenance Deployment Pre-Systems Deployment Keeping the Lights On 77%

2 The following table details the difference between conventional, do-it-yourself installations and vendordelivered converged infrastructure systems at each stage of the system lifecycle. As the table illustrates, by providing a standardized, vendor-delivered system, converged infrastructure providers take on many of the administrative tasks that historically have been performed by IT, freeing up resources for innovation. Converged Infrastructure Simplifies Infrastructure Management, Dramatically Reducing the Administrative Cost to Just Keep the Lights On Area Design Deploy Maintain Upgrade Support Evolve Customized Integration In the Field (Do-It-Yourself or Integrator-Built) Custom implementations consisting of separate pools for compute, network and storage, are designed for individual environments and for deployment by IT staff and vendor services. The system is delivered as components to the data center where it is physically and logically configured on site by vendor services and/or IT staff. Patches for each component must be thoroughly tested by IT staff against the custom installation to ensure compatibility. Expanding capacity requires careful testing of newer versions of components by the IT department. Vendors silo-based support organizations specialize in individual components and place the burden on IT of overall problem resolution and mediating finger pointing among vendors or among a vendor s product divisions. The process starts over from scratch at the design phase, relying on IT or service providers. Migration also requires customized services. Converged System: Vendor-Delivered Standardized System The system is engineered by the vendor as a single integrated pool for optimal performance, scalability, and availability and configured to meet customers unique needs. The complete system is manufactured and logically configured at the factory using standardized processes. Patches are preselected, pretested, and prepackaged by the vendor for interoperability and compatibility with installed configurations, and are ready for immediate non-disruptive deployment. Newer versions of components are preselected, pretested and certified for interoperability and design integrity and are ready for immediate non-disruptive deployment. There is a single point of ownership that is expert in all aspects of the system. All deployed system configurations are fully supported to accelerate problem resolution. Vendor engineers next generation system leveraging latest advances from each component while providing a migration path that interlocks roadmaps from each component. Early Success Spurs Further Advances When converged infrastructure systems first came on the market in late 2009, they met with immediate success. IT departments that had been burdened with increasing administrative costs quickly saw that working with a system that could be maintained and upgraded as a whole, not as a customized collection of components, reduced the administrative load, accelerated the deployment of new capabilities, and freed up resources for innovation. The success of these early CI deployments coupled with increasing demand for CI systems by customers has led the original CI vendors to continue to advance their solutions and attracted new entrants to the market. But not all converged infrastructure offerings, even those that share nearly identical marketing messages, are created equal. The key question for IT is: how far does the vendor truly go toward delivering on the promise of a vendor-delivered and supported system vs. providing systems that are simply assemblages of components where each deployment is a custom installation?

3 So how have VCE and HP advanced their CI solutions since 2009 and how well do they currently deliver on the promise of transforming IT infrastructure into a vendor-delivered system that lowers the administrative burden? To answer these questions, we conducted a converged infrastructure market study. As part of the study, we interviewed and surveyed 119 North American companies with $1B or more in revenue on their experience with converged infrastructure systems. We also conducted secondary research which included reviewing 46 HP case studies that were branded as converged infrastructure (identified via a thorough search of the HP website, industry sites, YouTube and a variety of other online sources) and reviewing analyst reports and other publically available information. 3 In the rest of this paper, we ll share our findings. Early Converged Infrastructure Systems Were Very Successful in Lowering the Costs of Keeping the Lights On and Freeing Up Resources for Innovation Business As Usual Innovation Keeping the Lights On Converged Infrastructure About VCE: VCE is a joint venture formed in November 2009 by EMC, Cisco and VMware, with investment from Intel. The company brought together IT infrastructure from the three industry leaders and sought to deliver it to customers as a single entity through the newly-created VCE. VCE introduced its reference architecture in 2009 and then introduced its first fully converged vendor-delivered system, the Vblock System (Vblock), in It has since released three more generations of Vblocks and expanded its portfolio significantly. Product Portfolio VCE offers 4 general purpose Vblock series (100, 200, 300 and 700) as well as several models within each series. Each series and model is designed to meet different price, performance and scalability needs. The company also offers specialized systems for SAP HANA, High Performance Databases, and Extreme Applications. Components All Vblocks are built on a standardized infrastructure that uses best-in-class components as follows: Compute and Network: Vblock s compute component is based on Cisco s UCS product line, and its network component is based on Cisco Nexus and MDS switches. Released in 2009, Cisco UCS and Nexus were designed from the ground up for virtualization and feature innovations such as unified fabric, embedded management, and policy computing that distinguish them from the competition. Cisco has long been the dominant networking vendor and in less than 4 years, it has grown to the #2 position in the global x86 blade server market from scratch according to IDC. 4 Storage: All Vblocks use storage from EMC, the leading provider of external storage with over a 34% share. 5 Each Vblock series uses the EMC product that matches its target price, performance and scalability parameters, with the top of the line 700 series using enterprise-class VMAX storage, the 200 and 300 using the mid-tier VNX product, and the 100 using the more affordable VNXe. Virtualization: VMware ESX is included in the solution package and supported by VCE. VMware is the leader in virtualization with 82% market share. Management: As part of its package VCE offers its Vision Intelligent Operations software (VCE Vision). VCE Vision s features include virtualization optimization, converged operation and an open API that enables users to use their own management tools of choice. 3 This study was funded by VCE

4 Market Experience According to a recent Gartner study, VCE currently controls 57% of the Integrated Infrastructure Systems market. 6 The company has over 500 customers worldwide and its customers have deployed over 1,100 systems. IDC analyses of VCE s customers, published in 2011 and 2013, show that VCE s customers have achieved major reductions in administrative costs and have freed up resources for innovation. In the most recent study, customers report: 7 5x faster deployment 96% less downtime 50% reduction in the annual data center cost About HP Converged Infrastructure Systems: HP s first step into the CI market came in 2009 with the introduction of its BladeSystem server chassis and the Virtual Connect FlexFabric networking module. Although the offering did not include storage, these products did bring together compute and networking into an integrated, vendor-delivered solution. In 2009 HP acquired networking vendor 3Com and in 2010 acquired storage vendor 3PAR, adding to a storage product portfolio that already included Lefthand, acquired in 2008, and its own legacy EVA storage. In mid 2011, the company repackaged its homegrown and acquired components, along with several software products, into its current lineup of converged infrastructure offerings, which consists of the following 3 product families: VirtualSystem: VirtualSystem is HP s basic converged infrastructure offering. The family includes an x86 configuration that scales from 2 to 64 blades and one Unix configuration that scales from 2 to 12 blades. For storage, VirtualSystem offers its midrange 3PAR storage. CloudSystem: For customers who need a more scalable system, or who would simply prefer to use components or software other than those that come with VirtualSystem, HP offers CloudSystem. Unlike VirtualSystem, which offers standard configurations, CloudSystem is an open architecture that offers customers the ability to choose from a wide range of networking, storage and other options or to forgo new top of rack networking and storage and connect to customers existing components. However, as described below, this choice comes at a cost in the form of a higher administrative burden. AppSystem: AppSystem is a family of appliances that HP describes as integrated systems optimized for dedicated business applications such as SAP, Hadoop, Data Warehousing, and Microsoft Messaging. While technically converged, these specialty appliances have different technology underpinnings than VirtualSystem and CloudSystem and have not been included in this comparison of general workload systems from each vendor. HP Converged Infrastructure Components VirtualSystem and CloudSystem can include the following components: Compute: The principal compute option is HP s BladeSystem c7000 chassis populated with x86 ProLiant or HP-UX Integrity Superdome blades. Networking: For both VirtualSystem and CloudSystem, HP uses its Virtual Connect FlexFabric networking module for internal and storage communications. At the top of the rack, VirtualSystems uses the HP-5920 switch to connect to the network. With CloudSystem, practically any top of rack system can be used. Furthermore, when CloudSystem is deployed with storage other than 3PAR, a separate fibre channel switch is required and customers can choose from multiple vendors such as Emulex or Qlogic

5 Storage: For VirtualSystem, HP offers its 3PAR storage. For CloudSystem, customers can choose to attach any storage certified with Virtual Connect, including its own Lefthand and legacy EVA storage, Hitachi XP, NetApp and EMC. Virtualization: For VirtualSystem, HP offers Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware, and HP VM (for the HP-UX operating system). Management: HP offers a bundle of approximately a dozen software packages for managing its converged infrastructure offerings. The specific components vary by installation, but the list includes the Matrix Operating environment, Insight Control, Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager and Cloud Service Automation. Market Experience HP has reported that it has nearly 900 customers of just its CloudSystem and industry analyst research reports have ranked it as the second largest CI provider, although with less than half the market share of industry leader VCE. 8 However, in our own research, we have had a difficult time validating those figures. From a marketing standpoint, HP has sought to bolster its position in the converged infrastructure by applying the term to a wide range of customer deployments. As described above, as part of our research, we reviewed 46 HP case studies that HP branded as converged infrastructure and could not verify that any of them were for a true vendor-delivered system that integrated compute, network and storage into a single pool. What we found were: Technology Consolidation Deployments: The majority, 24 of 46, of the case studies were for deployments where HP used converged to mean any technology consolidation such as converging voice and data into a single network, converging several local data centers into a single centralized data center, or converging a large number of servers into a smaller number of virtualized hardware servers. BladeSystem Deployments: 18 more of the 46 converged infrastructure case studies were for the HP BladeSystem. With Virtual Connect FlexFabric, BladeSystem does converge compute and network. However, these deployments still use a separate storage pool instead of pre-integrated storage and at best can be considered only partially converged. CloudSystem/CloudSystem Matrix Deployments: 4 of the case studies were for CloudSystem. However, in our interviews with two of these, we found that they used a separate storage pool instead of preintegrated storage. In the third case, our interview uncovered that HP was operating the deployment for the customer and there was no way to independently verify what was deployed. In the fourth case, who we did not interview, the case study was ambiguous about whether pre-integrated storage was deployed as part of the system. In fact, across all of our research, including the online survey, interviews, and our case study analysis, we did not verify a single HP customer who had deployed a fully converged system. Since we didn t interview and/or survey every HP account, they may very well have customers who have deployed fully converged systems. However, our finding suggests there are far fewer than the numbers reported by analyst reports and HP marketing. Our Review of 46 HP Case Studies Branded as Converged Infrastructure Did Not Verify Any Fully Converged Systems BladeSystem Only 39% Technology Consolidation 51% 5% 5% CloudSystem- Deployment scope not verfied CloudSystem using a Seperate Storage Pool 8

6 VCE vs. HP Converged Infrastructure Summary At the heart of comparing the VCE Vblock family to HP converged infrastructure is a basic question: how does the installation and operation of each vendor s systems compare to the vendor-delivered system paradigm described in the chart on the second page of this paper? As discussed earlier, VCE and HP were among the first to introduce CI systems in At the time, both systems offered a significant advancement over what came before but when it comes to data center systems, 4 years is a lifetime. The bottom line is that since 2009 VCE has made great strides, and today delivers a cohesive vendor-delivered system that considerably simplifies infrastructure administration, increases agility, and frees up resources for innovation. In contrast, HP appears to have made little progress since it introduced BladeSystem and Virtual Connect in Underinvestment in R&D has been a recurring theme at HP in general over the last several years and that may be the reason its converged infrastructure offerings have not advanced as much as would be expected. 9 Just as they did in 2009, the now aging BladeSystem and Virtual Connect products still form the heart of HP s converged systems. Storage, which wasn t included at all in the company s 2009 offering, remains an afterthought. With CloudSystem, storage is optional and with VirtualSystem, storage is limited to HP s own midrange 3PAR product line. Our analysis also suggests that even when HP does sell compute, network and storage as an integrated system, they have not invested nearly as much as VCE has in simplifying the design, deployment, maintenance, support, and upgrade experience. VCE vs. HP: Detailed Analysis by Lifecycle Stage In the chart below, we summarize our assessment of how far each vendor has progressed toward delivering on the vendor-delivered system paradigm. Evaluation of the VCE Vblock and HP Converged Infrastructure across the System Lifecycle on the Degree to Which it Performs as a Vendor-Delivered Standardized System vs. a Customized, Field Integrated Installation (1 to 5 scale) Area VCE Vblock HP Converged Infrastructure Design 5 3 Deploy 5 3 Maintain 4 2 Upgrade 4 2 Support 5 3 Evolve 4 Not Available Total Design: Evaluation Criteria: The system is engineered by the vendor as a single integrated pool for optimal performance, scalability, and availability and configured to meet customers unique needs. VCE s Vblock was conceived of and engineered as a vendor-delivered system for highly virtualized and cloud environments. The company s vision of creating an optimized vendor-delivered system is evidenced in 1) its selection of best of breed components and 2) providing a family of systems that match the varying price, performance and scalability needs of different customers. In comparison HP s design appears to be primarily driven by repackaging the products it already has, not from investing in R&D to build a scalable, optimized, and standardized vendor-delivered system. 9

7 VirtualSystem, HP s only standardized offering to combine compute, network and storage, lacks the scalability of VCE. It tops out at just 64 servers vs. 384 servers for VCE s Vblock 700. Furthermore, with VirtualSystem, HP offers 2 different types of blades, 4 hypervisors and a host of other options suggesting that HP has invested very little in trying to optimize and simplify its configurations and instead has just repackaged all of its available options under the VirtualSystem s umbrella with little new development. VCE Vblocks are Available in Configurations Ranging from 2 to 384 Servers While HP s VirtualSystem Tops Out at 64 Servers Maximum Number of Servers VCE Vblock Family HP Virtual Systems A closer comparison of the constituent components of both systems further illustrates the differences. Server: Where HP s converged infrastructure offerings are based on its aging BladeSystem platform, VCE uses Cisco s innovative UCS platform. While HP is still the leading provider of x86 blade servers, its position is quickly eroding in favor of Cisco. Cisco entered the x86 blade server market in 2009 and is now the #2 provider. In Q2 2013, Cisco held a 22% share of the global market and 34% of the US market. Over the same period, HP s share of the global market has fallen from 50% to 43%. 10 This rapid shift in market share is largely due to Cisco s technology advantages over HP, such as: Cisco s blades are truly stateless, meaning that configuration settings including network settings, BIOS and firmware are managed in software. HP is only partially stateless a greater share of its settings need to be managed at the individual blade level. This greater complexity creates more work for IT. Cisco UCS has a fabric-centric design which eliminates switching within the blade chassis and requires just 2 UCS Fabric Interconnects for the entire deployment. HP requires 2 Virtual Connect networking modules to be installed in each 16 blade enclosure, leading to extra cost, cabling, management complexity and maintenance. Cisco UCS is optimized for x86 while HP BladeSystem supports both its ProLiant x86 blades and Superdome Itanium-based blades for HP-UX. Designing for two inherently different blades introduces tradeoffs that lead to sub-optimizing for both. 10

8 Storage: While HP offers its own 3PAR storage for its VirtualSystem, VCE Vblocks are built using storage from market leader EMC. EMC has long been the storage market leader and has steadily been increasing its lead. From Q to Q EMC s share of the external storage market grew from 27.8% to 34.2%. Over the same period, HP s share of the market fell from 9.9% to 7.9%. 11 The fortunes of EMC s and HP s storage products stem directly from the breadth of each vendor s product line and strength of its technology: EMC offers storage solutions that scale from the more affordable VNXe to the enterprise class VMAX. VCE s product families take advantage of the breadth of EMC s products to offer customers options to meet a wide range of price and performance needs. In contrast, HP offers only midrange storage. At the high end, EMC s top of the line VMAX can support the largest and most demanding applications through features such as federated storage. In contrast, HP does not have equivalent capabilities and scalability. In the midrange, EMC s VNX provides exceptional performance by leveraging the full power of the latest multi-core Intel processors while HP s performance is limited by its custom ASIC, which is difficult and expensive to update. In both the midrange and the high end, EMC offers predictable high performance and low latency through features such as SSD caching. In comparison, HP s wide striping and thin provisioning leads to higher latency and unpredictable performance. For customers whose installation requires enterprise class and/or higher performance storage, HP will sell the customer CloudSystem and substitute storage from another vendor in the field. However, substituting storage in the field breaks the integrity of the vendor-delivered system paradigm and turns the deployment into a custom installation. Hypervisors: VCE is designed and optimized for one hypervisor, industry leader VMware. HP offers a choice of four hypervisors for VirtualSystem and CloudSystem. 12 While it is possible, it is highly unlikely that HP has engineered the same degree of system optimization and support for four hypervisors that VCE has for one. Questions for Evaluating System Design As a potential buyer of a converged infrastructure system, here are questions regarding the design of the system we recommend you ask as part of your evaluation: 1. Has the vendor truly engineered systems optimized for virtualized and cloud infrastructures or have they simply packaged their legacy components and software under their converged product line? 2. Does the vendor offer truly pre-integrated solutions designed for each tier of performance and availability? Deploy: Evaluation Criteria: The complete system is manufactured and logically configured at the factory using standardized processes. Speed of deployment is a key outcome of VCE s focus on design-level standardization and integration. In most cases, VCE Vblocks are capable of shouldering operational loads within 45 days from time of customer order and within 48 hours of delivery. Both physical and logical builds are completed at the factory, so when a Vblock system reaches its destination: All components are assembled and fully tested System is logically configured using a repeatable process with extensive automation VMware and naming conventions are installed and IP addresses and VLANs are defined

9 The net result is that VCE Vblocks arrive quickly and can be put into service in a short time span with low administrative effort for IT staff and minimal vendor services. Even in the best case, very little of the HP converged infrastructure build takes place at the factory. When a customer does purchase one of the standard VirtualSystem configurations, it does get physically assembled at the factory. However, these systems still require logical configuration in the field by IT staff or vendor professional services teams. For CloudSystem, when a customer requires more scalable or higher performing storage other than HP s midrange offerings, or opts for networking from another vendor, not only does the logical configuration take place in the field, so does the physical integration, requiring significant IT resources and/or professional services. Questions for Evaluating Deployment 1. Does the system require physical or logical configuration on site and how much of your internal labor or their professional services will be required to deploy it? 2. Does the vendor provide a guaranteed deployment window for the system? 3. How much has deployment risk been reduced by the vendor? Maintain: Evaluation Criteria: Patches are preselected, pretested, and prepackaged by the vendor for interoperability and compatibility with installed configurations, and are ready for immediate non-disruptive deployment. With a constant stream of updates for each component, patching can be an administrative nightmare. Not every patch is relevant to every deployed configuration, and each patch introduces its interoperability and compatibility risk in its own way. VCE simplifies the process and mitigates the risk as follows: 1. Since VCE only ships Vblocks in standard configurations, the company supports the entire configuration for every system it ships. As a result, VCE is able to evaluate each patch to determine which patches actually need to be installed on which systems. 2. VCE then tests each patch that does need to be installed against the entire Vblock system, certifying compatibility at system-level. 3. Finally, VCE bundles the patches into a single release. Through this process, VCE delivers risk-free patch bundles with predictable outcomes on a regular basis, eliminating the need for customers to select and test each patch, released at unpredictable times, against their specific configuration. Even in the best case, for its standard VirtualSystems configurations, HP s design complexity (2 types of processors, 4 hypervisors, etc.) means that they cannot provide nearly the level of patch support as VCE. Rather than offering a synchronized patch update across all its components, HP s patching is completed component by component. For example, HP CloudSystem Matrix 7.1 Update 1 Release Notes instruct the customer to contact their 3PAR representative separately for upgrading storage components. Though HP does provide the CloudSystem Matrix Compatibility Chart, customers are responsible for ensuring compatibility with their own configurations, which are often highly customized. Questions for Evaluating Maintenance 1. Does the vendor issue system releases of patches that are pre-selected, fully tested and validated against the entire system or do they issue component-by-component patches that you need to validate on your own custom installation?

10 Upgrade: Evaluation Criteria: Newer versions of components are preselected, pretested and certified for interoperability and design integrity and are ready for immediate non-disruptive deployment. Since component vendors release new versions of their products every few months, it is virtually guaranteed that when a customer seeks to expand the capacity of their system, they will be installing newer component versions. VCE handles the integration of new hardware component versions in a way similar to how it handles patches each new component release is tested against each shipped system configuration to ensure system-level compatibility. In addition, the company also tests the design integrity of the complete system, ensuring that it has the headroom for and can support the power and cooling needs of the new component. As with patches, by the time new components reach the customer, they are ready to install with minimal disruption. Similar to patching, HP s design complexity and share of field-customized installations means that it is virtually impossible for them to fully certify each new component release against customers individual deployments. This leaves the burden of testing each upgrade to the customer, as well as the risk carried by each release. Questions for Evaluating Upgrades 1. Does the vendor preselect, fully test and validate upgraded components against your deployed configurations beforehand at its own facilities, or do these components need to be tried out in your systems by your own IT resources, or your vendor at your time and cost? Support: Evaluation Criteria: There is a single point of ownership that is expert in all aspects of the system. All deployed system configurations are fully supported to accelerate problem resolution. VCE Support features a single point of contact for service request management and responsibility, including escalation support tied directly into Cisco, EMC and VMware engineering support. VCE s cross-trained support staff handles compute, network, storage and virtualization, and in 2012 they were able to resolve 70% of calls without escalation to more specialized support. VCE s emphasis on standardization also means problem-solving is shared across its customer base solutions are engineered in labs dedicated to problem re-creation and then distributed through the support network as needed. HP s support model is more akin to triage than integration. While HP does offer a single point of contact for large customers who purchase that option separately, it is still the silo-based organizations that actually provide support. These silo-based support organizations put the burden of isolating the problem and proving which component is causing the issue on IT staff. HP s emphasis on customization also means more problems are unique in nature, limiting shared problemsolving knowledge base and resulting in slower resolutions. Questions for Evaluating Support 1. Is there a true single point of ownership for support or just a single point of contact that serves as a front end to traditional siloed support?

11 Evolve: Evaluation Criteria: Vendor engineers next generation system leveraging latest advances from each component while providing a migration path that interlocks roadmaps from each component. VCE has a proven record of releasing new versions of its Vblocks that include the latest advances from each component vendor. The first Vblock was released in 2010 and the company is currently shipping its fourth generation system. The company maintains close roadmap coordination with Cisco, EMC and VMware to provide customers with visibility into new capabilities as they are being developed and a clear migration path for implementing new technologies. As described earlier in the paper, we had little success in identifying HP customers who had deployed a true vendor-delivered solution from HP. Combined with the lack of published material on migrating from one generation of HP converged systems to the next, we do not have sufficient information to judge how HP plans to support migration to new generations of systems. Questions for Evaluating Upgrades 1. Does the vendor have a proven record of introducing new generations of its solutions? 2. If it does, does it offer a migration path for its installed customers? Conclusion: The key challenge for IT remains accelerating innovation by reducing the time, money and resources spent on deploying and administering infrastructure systems. Converged infrastructure solutions offer a way to do just that, but only if the system is designed with the needs of IT in mind. By creating a system that, on the surface, looks like a converged infrastructure, but is almost always extensively customized, HP does little to address the administrative load that is prevalent throughout the system lifecycle. By contrast, VCE Vblock truly changed the status quo. It built an integrated system that simplifies purchasing and setup, shortens the time it takes to bring new capabilities on line, and reduces the cost and complexity throughout the lifecycle of the product. In short, VCE is in the business of supporting a whole system that is much more than just the sum of its parts. Final Question: Will the system enable you to truly transform your IT operations, shorten the time-to-market for new capabilities and free up resources for innovation?