Private Cloud Stacks: Page 3 of 3

The Reality

There are pros and cons to both approaches dependent on the business drivers and challenges. Through my experience I've found greater value in the multi-vendor approach as long as two challenges are addressed. The first is the delivery model - Does it show up as a single solution or a bunch of boxes? If not the customer will require the knowledge and expertise to integrate the components and properly configure them to the architectural standards, which can slow adoption and increase risk. The second is the support model. Do I have single number support and appropriate knowledge levels from support personnel? Without this the customer will spend unnecessary cycles troubleshooting issues and tracking multiple support tickets amongst the various vendors involved. Kingman Tang and I discussed this topic at length.

The issue that tends to arise with the single vendor approach is that a single vendor rarely if ever has the best-in-class hardware and software required to build this level of integrated platform. For example software only (or mostly software only) vendors such as Citrix and VMware dominate server and desktop virtualization and will be needed in many solutions breaking the 'single-vendor' spell at the base infrastructure level. Additionally solutions like Exalogic leave out the majority of the traditional x86 applications and Windows based servers leaving you with a cloud silo. That being said there are customers who prefer the model of a single trusted vendor providing the infrastructure or most of it, and thus there is value in that model.

Another key point is that just because automation/orchestration software is included in a product offering doesn't mean it's ready to go 'out-of-the-box.' Orchestration and automation are very custom software sets that typically require significant service hours to integrate and tailor to each individual environment.

Integrated offerings such as the ones above can greatly increase the pace of private cloud adoption or scale out of new more flexible services but it is important to carefully assess which approach correctly fits the goals and objectives of the organization.

Disclaimer: In my primary role I work with several products from each of the vendors mentioned but they are used here for example purposes only and are not an endorsement of the products or vendors.