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SimpliVity in More Places

Following partnerships with many of the larger server vendors, including Cisco, Dell, and Lenovo, SimpliVity is now working Huawei.   The partnership brings the company’s OmniStack technology to Huawei’s FusionServer RH2288H V3. It speaks for how well SimpliVity’s HCI solution is regarded that they’re reaching these partnership even with companies that offer competing ones.

OmniStack with Huawei

From a hardware perspective, SimpliVity’s layout is familiar. They’ll be deploying their accelerator card in the unit to assist with dedupe. In the briefing call, they advised that their software solution for this is in the works, but a market for hardware acceleration will probably persist depending on the workload. For the Huawei deal, they are really pushing this as an all flash solution first and foremost. There are hybrid layouts available, but in their partnership, they really see this as a flash drive. One of the primary reasons for the partnership with Huawei was to gain access to their assertive sales organization, which SimpliVity sees as class leading.

This brings up the most interesting point. They won’t be targeting this at the US market initially, but rather focus on Europe and Africa. I asked SimpliVity if they thought an all flash push would be the way to go in the African market. Admittedly, my knowledge of this market is incomplete at best. I know there are a lot of emerging tech hubs, but without better knowledge of their business needs, connectivity, and budgets, I thought the question was worth pursuing. From what Huawei and SimpliVity saw, even with the current premium on price, all flash solutions are not only viable in the African market, but highly sought after.

Of course this brings up the elephant in the room. With SimpliVity making deals with most of the major server vendors, it begs the question of if they’re got a partnership in the pipeline with HP Enterprise. This is bellied by acquisition rumors that surfaced last month. Right now SimpliVity is understandably mum on any partnership. They simply stated that there is certainly customer demand, which is to be expected.

Regardless of where things fall with HPE, SimpliVity clearly wants to be on as much hardware as possible. For now, it seems like the major server companies are more than happy to have them.

About the author

Rich Stroffolino

Rich has been a tech enthusiast since he first used the speech simulator on a Magnavox Odyssey². Current areas of interest include ZFS, the false hopes of memristors, and the oral history of Transmeta.

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