EMC World 2012: VCE unveils EMC VMAX 10K Vblock

published 22 May 2012

The Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) Company has updated its product portfolio to include a new Vblock based on EMC's VMAX 10K storage array.

The tri-vendor coalition, which counts VMware, Cisco and EMC as members, debuted the latest addition to its Vblock family of cloud-enabling infrastructure packages at EMC World in Las Vegas earlier today.

We grew faster in the enterprise than we expected. Nobody expected us to be at this level, and I mean nobody.

It is called the Vblock 700x and contains the new EMC VMAX 10K, which the storage vendor launched yesterday, Cisco's UCS server and Nexus switches, and VMware's vSphere 5 software.

The VCE also announced that Vblocks will now support EMC's VPLEX product, which allows businesses to move applications between datacentres and clouds, meaning end users can share data between two Vblocks.

On top of this, Vblocks will now come equipped with data protection tools, including EMC's Avamar, Data Domain and RecoverPoint replication software.

During a media briefing at the event, Michael Capellas, the chairman of VCE, said the new product would be backed by the company's rejigged customer support model.

"[The support] system is in collaboration with the parent companies [EMC, VMware, Cisco] and we can take a call from anywhere, triage it, resolve it and that is one of the reasons why our customer satifaction [score] is rising," said Capellas.

He also provided an update on how the VCE business is doing, where he claimed the firm ended 2011 "pretty close" to a $1 billion run rate.

"[We achieved that] over a period of time, with a brand new organisational model that had never been tried before," he said.

"We grew faster in the enterprise than we expected. Nobody expected us to be at this level, and I mean nobody."

The company has now set itself the target of hitting the $3 billion run rate mark, added Capellas.

"We do think [that] target is well within our reach over the next couple of years," he said. "We're doubling every quarter and it's all pretty exciting."

Caroline Donnelly is the news and analysis editor of IT Pro and its sister site Cloud Pro, and covers general news, as well as the storage, security, public sector, cloud and Microsoft beats. Caroline has been a member of the IT Pro/Cloud Pro team since March 2012, and has previously worked as a reporter at several B2B publications, including UK channel magazine CRN, and as features writer for local weekly newspaper, The Slough and Windsor Observer. She studied Medical Biochemistry at the University of Leicester and completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Magazine Journalism at PMA Training in 2006.