Posted by Brian Gracely - Sr.Manager, Virtualization Architecture and MarketingA week ago, like many people, I sat in awe throughout the day watching the magnitude of the VCE launch unfold. It was awesome!! I give trememdous kudos to the Marketing, Technical Marketing, PR, Web and Creative departments at Cisco, EMC and VMware. To coordinate that many people to be focused on a single event is an incredible undertaking, and I've been lucky enough to be part of some huge ones in the past.
But over the past week, as the dust settles, we've all had some time to think about what VCE means to customers, our partners and our businesses.
More than ever, I'm excited that NetApp made conscious decisions several years ago to invest in openness for the virtualized Data Center market. I've highlighted that openness and flexibility in the past. While we still have outstanding partnerships and solutions with both VMware and Cisco, including Cisco Validated Designs, we firmly believe that customers deserve choice to best align their business needs with their technology needs. If Cisco/VMware/NetApp are the best choice, we've got great solutions for them today. If one of those components isn't the best fit, we have outstanding (and award winning) partnerships with Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Citrix and many others. As the only truly Unified Storage vendor that delivers integration and storage efficiency across all virtualization partners, we believe that driving customer value through flexibility is a strategy that will benefit both customers and partners in the long-run.
More than ever, I'm glad that we're been very transparent about our position around go-to-market (Rule #1) and how we plan to engage so that customers ultimately get the best possible solution for their business problems. While technology can do some incredible things, it doesn't do them alone. If the people elements aren't aligned, it's amazing how many great ideas can get bogged down. We believe in letting skilled engineers build great products, in letting skilled operators run networks, and in letting customers focus on running their businesses. We're not in the business of making proof point sandboxes so that we can learn at customers expense. We've been able to learn a tremendous amount about operating large-scale Data Centers by working closely with our partners (and building our own Green Data Center).
More than ever, I'm glad that creative Systems Integrators (and NetApp partners) are adding unique value to their Data Center service offerings by leveraging NetApp as part of their solution. We firmly believe that innovation comes from flexibility, and innovation helps increase productivity and reduce costs. We're proud of the innovation that our partners deliver today, and we're very excited to see what they come up with in the next couple of years. In today's Web 2.0 world, where good ideas come from everywhere and they are magnified by great collaboration, NetApp will be re-doubling our efforts to engage creativity from our partners to solve the difficult challenges that face the Data Centers in this new decade.
Never before have we seen such a parallel shifting of technology, global economics and business needs. I'd be lying if I said that I know where it will all come out in 3-5 years, but I do know that it won't look like it does today. My advice is to think slowly, make sure your decisions align with the business needs of your company, and to stay focused on flexibility. The global economy dictates that those with the most flexibility will survive and prosper when the next "100 year flood" comes along.
As the ancient Chinese proverb tells us, "May you live in interesting times...". With so many industry changing technologies, and so many companies on each other's dance cards, I think it's fair to say that we're living in interesting times.
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