Transforming complexity into simplicity
Where there’s greater complexity in your business and IT/cloud infrastructure, there’s often increased risk. But, with the upcoming announcement of a new VersaStack™ Cisco Validated Design (CVD) for your private cloud, IBM and Cisco are minimizing your risk so your private cloud deployment is simple, easy and efficient.
The new CVD, which is currently scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2018, integrates IBM Cloud Private (ICP) into the VersaStack™ solution family through the IBM Spectrum Access Blueprint. Essentially, this Blueprint describes an easy-to-deploy method for bringing together the private cloud and container capabilities with the converged infrastructure solution provided by IBM and Cisco.
IBM is a leader in aggressively developing offerings that address the strong market demand for converged infrastructure and for private cloud solutions across the full range of application workloads, business use cases and enterprise types. Ed Walsh, IBM General Manager for Storage and Software-Defined Infrastructure, recently stated:
“True private cloud and hybrid-cloud deployment models are increasingly important in enterprises’ digital transformation strategies. IBM continues to be the market leader in storage software, and is excited to deliver IBM Spectrum Access to enable enterprise data management and protection for IBM Cloud Private, with operational and VersaStack™ infrastructure efficiency.”[1]
Deployable with VersaStack™, IBM Spectrum Access solution delivers what enterprises need to deploy private clouds built on converged infrastructure. ICP with IBM Storage provides the economics and simplicity of the public cloud with the accessibility, scalability, security and performance of an on-premises implementation. IBM Cloud Private is the IBM software platform for enterprises to deliver cloud-native applications, modernize traditional application workloads with cloud microservices and containers, and scale those applications quickly and seamlessly. IBM Cloud Private provides control for how and where applications consume cloud services, and provides services and experience consistent with the public IBM Cloud.
IBM Cloud Private with IBM Spectrum Access is designed to accelerate the work of enterprise developers by providing access to valuable data and applications behind the firewall through a flexible container-based architecture and API-based catalog of services. Everything from best-practice architecture designs to detailed configuration documentation is available to make the solution easier and faster to deploy.
Using Spectrum Access Blueprint for IBM Cloud Private unlocks the deployment flexibility and software-defined agility of IBM Storage to handle the task for delivering modern workloads enabled through the capabilities of VersaStack™.
“Cloud is fueling massive growth. According to our recent Cisco Global Cloud Index study, private clouds will grow from 84 million instances to 144 million in 5 years. Spectrum Access for IBM Cloud Private running on VersaStack™ converged infrastructure from Cisco and IBM, allows our customers to leverage the advantages of these cloud architectures with the security and manageability of on-premises workloads. The new CVD simplifies the process further, eliminating the risk and expense of trial and error approaches.” – Siva Sivakumar, Director of Cisco Data Center Product Management and Engineering.
The key to lowering complexity and deployment risk lies in the Cisco Validated Design process. Each CVD has been comprehensively tested and documented by Cisco engineers to ensure faster, more reliable, and fully predictable solution deployments within the Unified Computing System environment. Since VersaStack™ solutions were first offered in 2014, IBM and Cisco have worked closely together to release more than three dozen CVDs that provide frameworks to address business use cases and IT requirements ranging from hybrid cloud and virtual desktops to small and mid-sized businesses and remote and branch office environments.
With the coming CVD, IBM Spectrum Access for IBM Cloud Private will enable deployment of both IBM Spectrum Virtualize- and IBM Spectrum Accelerate-based IBM all-flash storage arrays in the VersaStack solutions. This means that no matter what your system performance, data economics, and storage virtualization needs may be, there will be an IBM all-flash storage system validated to address them within your VersaStack™ solution environment.
IBM Storage has stated that multi-cloud is the future of IT. With the new CVD, VersaStack™ will provide a simple way to deploy private cloud solutions that transform multi-cloud vision into reality with simplicity, efficiency, and security.
[1] IBM IT Infrastructure Blog: IBM Spectrum Access for IBM Cloud Private, October 2017 https://www.ibm.com/blogs/systems/ibm-spectrum-access-for-ibm-cloud-private/