VCE, VBlock and Arcadia

 Cisco hosted the first shoe dropping, and John Chambers presided. Cisco and EMC have been at work for some time developing "blueprints" for chunks of virtual infrastructure (servers, network and storage) called VBlock's. They discussed three configurations (VBlock0, 1 and 2) ranging from substantial to quite large (minicomputer to mainframe price, in legacy terms). Each VBlock comprises a configuration of Cisco's UCS integrated server and network offering, mated with a suitable EMC storage offering, using VMware VSphere virtualization software. Cisco uses the term "blueprint" normally to mean a configuration that is very precisely specified (physical and logical configuration) and thoroughly tested. If you want to buy a piece of virtual infrastructure of some capacity (measured in virtual servers) this is a way of getting one that works and doesn't require much customer learning to install and commission correctly. Cisco and EMC motivate this effort as follows: Both companies are convinced that moving data center operation to a highly virtualized structures results in very significant savings in data center operation, both CapEx and OpEx (not to mention higher quality operation). There is enough evidence of the simple benefits of server consolidation to make this quite plausible. When this vision is presented to prospective customers, the customer typically asks "Tell me what I have to do." VCE (the consortium) and VBlocks are part of the answer — here's a template for a known good solution. But the effort doesn't stop there. There is also a Joint venture called Arcadia. Arcadia will take the next step and deploy a VBlock for a customer, and operate it for a bounded period of time. Our "knowledgeable, unnamed sources" say that up until the announcement, the structure of Arcadia was under debate, and creating a real product company was considered (moving development and manufacturing resources to Arcadia), but in the end this unique form of JV was chosen. If the arrangement can be made to work, it will be an elegant solution. Underneath the covers, Cisco, EMC and VMware are working to integrate their service management systems, so a VBlock solution can be serviced by an EMC, Cisco or Arcadia customer with only "one (vendor) throat to choke." Of course the world is complicated by things like discounts, sales commissions and account management, so we'll just have to wait and see how it works out in practice. Cisco's motivation seems reasonably straightforward. The Nuova/UCS solution does an elegant job of integrating the networking and server components but left storage selection, integration and operation to the customer, and all these pose technical and cultural challanges. UCS acceptance and deployment will be made easier and accelerated by the availability of VBlocks and Arcadia. We also heard that Cisco thinks that these product blocks will be attractive to the integrators who compete with the in-house groups of HP and IBM, so go-to-market values also play into their thinking. EMC was very clear that they will be a technology company: they have nearly 2,000 consultants in their professional services group but that a much smaller part of the business than with HP or IBM, supporting the notion of gaining market strength though the unaligned integrators.