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This week IBM and Cisco announced a new VersaStack offering that combines converged infrastructure with cloud functionality into one powerful solution – VersaStack for Hybrid Cloud. Although much of the focus during the announcement has been on the hybrid cloud aspect of this new solution, it’s important to note that many of these same IBM and Cisco components can just as easily be combined to create VersaStack for Automated Infrastructure, which provides the foundation for versatile private cloud solutions.  As you know, some companies will not use public or hybrid cloud configurations due to regulatory, security, or other corporate issues.

A private cloud delivers similar advantages and functionality to those offered by public clouds, including self-service and scalability, multi-tenancy, the ability to provision machines and chargeback tools to track resource usage. But unlike public clouds, which deliver services to multiple organizations, your private cloud is dedicated to you. Market surveys suggest that private cloud adoption rates may climb to nearly 85 percent by 2018.

VersaStack for Automated Infrastructure is a converged infrastructure solution with additional software components that automate infrastructure deployment and data management. It can provide the foundation for private cloud solutions that offer infrastructure as a service. It broadens VersaStack horizons with both IBM and Cisco best-in-class systems and software products to create an easy-to-consume private cloud solution that can include:

• IBM Spectrum Copy Data Management, which orchestrates the creation, distribution, use and efficient management of copies of data.
• Cisco ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite Infrastructure as a Service. A core component of this is the Cisco UCS Director, which automates on-premises infrastructure and Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) networking configurations.

VersaStack for Automated Infrastructure accelerates infrastructure and application deployment while efficiently managing data and data copies, freeing up resources for new-generation applications and cognitive workloads.

The new VersaStack hybrid and private cloud solutions join a growing list of VersaStack implementations already providing great value to commercial and public organizations of all sizes and types. For example, a VersaStack solution has helped the Arizona State Land Department to substantially increase both system and staff productivity:

“Our GIS, engineering, and Oracle applications were slow and underperforming. With our VersaStack solution, we’ve been able to boost system and staff performance and enable mobile access to business-critical data and tools via a hybrid cloud. VersaStack gives us faster, smarter systems that enable us to make better-informed decisions about the State Land Trust much more efficiently, for the benefit of all students in the Arizona Public Schools education system, the primary beneficiary of the trust. ”

– Bill Reed, Chief Technology Officer, Arizona State Land Department

On the storage side, VersaStack for Automated Infrastructure utilizes the rich functionality of IBM Spectrum Virtualize through storage options such as FlashSystem V9000, Storwize V7000 and V5000 family, or SAN Volume Controller (SVC). Spectrum Virtualize-based VersaStack provides powerful multi-vendor, heterogeneous storage system support. It delivers capabilities that extend a broad spectrum of enterprise class data services such as data compression, encryption and FlashCopy management across up to 400 multivendor storage arrays though Spectrum Virtualize’s storage virtualization technology.

On the server, network, and overall system management sides, Cisco UCS integrated platforms are designed specifically for converged data center operations. UCS solutions simplify hardware infrastructure, drastically reducing the number of devices requiring setup, management, power, cooling and cabling. The Cisco UCS platform provides superior performance, scalability and high availability while also delivering a unified network fabric.

You can add the power of IBM Spectrum Copy Data Management to all of these capabilities to transform data economics. Copies can account for more than 60 percent of the data in today’s IT infrastructure1. By 2018, industry analysts estimate that these extra copies of production data will cost enterprises $51 billion dollars and consume 475 PB of storage. Including IBM Spectrum Copy Data Management in the VersaStack for Automated Infrastructure solution can make a dramatic increase in storage efficiency possible, freeing up resources that can be refocused on revenue-generating business priorities.

Private cloud is one of the critical foundations of today’s modern IT vision. Essentially, traditional data centers are transitioning, if not to hybrid clouds then to private cloud within the next few years. VersaStack for Automated Infrastructure delivers a powerful pathway through this transformation, and a foundation from which to offer Infrastructure as a service – for internal departments or external customers. Add its converged infrastructure aspects, and the total value provided by this solution will make it very difficult to beat. Learn more here.

Read more about the VersaStack announcement here and here.

1 IDC Technology Spotlight: Solving the Copy Data Problem with In-Place Copy Data Management (Oct. 2015)

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