VCE Intros New Products, Revamps Channel Partner Program

VCE, a firm resulting from the joint venture of Cisco, VMware, and EMC, announces its new products and the various enhancements made to its channel partner program.

New VCE Products

The new products being rolled out by VCE include an addition to the Vblock 300 line of converged infrastructure systems and two other purpose-built systems that support high-performance databases (such as those by Oracle) and extreme applications.

The purpose-built Vblock systems for high-performance databases can handle operating environments that require millions of IOPS (scalable to hundreds of terabytes) and constant availability. The Vblock Specialized System for Extreme Applications, on the other hand, is equipped with an all-flash technology sporting inline de-duplication. This new VCE specialized system offering delivers the performance and responsiveness required for highly scalable VDI implementations.

The Vblock System 340, the recent addition to the 300 series, includes the latest computing, network, storage, and virtualization technologies from VCE's investor companies - Cisco, VMware, and EMC. The new Vblock System 340 has twice the capacity and four times the performance of the earlier Vblock System 300.

An upgrade to VCE's Vision Intelligent Operations software has also been introduced. The software, which was first unveiled in February 2013, brings up-to-date customer management frameworks regarding the Vblock System's configuration and health. This enables the Vblock System to be viewed and managed as one converged infrastructure element. The new Vision Intelligent Operations software version has proactive scanning, release and security reporting, as well as automated updates of the recent patches and software releases for Vblock components.

In addition, VCE has a new Cloud Accelerator Services to aid customers in building, planning, and implementing scalable "as a service" cloud infrastructures. The VCE Cloud Accelerator Services brings together the service catalog facility afforded by self-service portals and Vblock Systems chargeback with expertise on business processes, operations, and organizational transformation.

An Improved Channel Partner Program

The company's channel partner program has been modified to better support the various services and solutions opportunities for VCE partners.

According to D. Martin, vice president of worldwide channels for VCE, the company began its channel three years ago by recruiting partners from its three investor companies. It soon became obvious that understanding the finer details of Vblock's workings is not as important for partners as supporting the services and solutions that run on Vblock systems. This approach has guided the latest revamp of the company's partner program.

A tiered system has been established. The different tiers are designated as Authorized, Silver, and Gold. The tiers are each accorded with graduated requirements and rebates.

New specializations in services and solutions are also instituted. On the services side, two competencies - deployment/implementation and management/operations - are offered to partners. And on the solutions side, the two new specializations for partners include messaging/collaboration (Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint) and VDI.

"VCE has set the pace in true converged infrastructure, delivering innovative products and services to customers that enable transformative results by reducing costs, increasing reliability, and accelerating time-to-market," said Praveen Akkiraju, chief executive officer at VCE. "The solutions announced today, along with our increased investment in our partners, reinforces our commitment to help customers simplify and accelerate the deployment of next generation datacenter and cloud infrastructures. With VCE, IT organizations are able to more effectively support and - for the first time - get ahead of end-user requirements in today's dynamic business environment." (KOM) Link. Link.