VMware, Cisco, EMC lovechild to live in Big Daddy EMC's house As rumoured, VCE, the three-way love child of VMware, Cisco and EMC, is to be absorbed into the EMC Federation this quarter. VCE builds and sells converged Vblock systems based on VMware’s virtualisation software, Cisco servers and networking and EMC storage. It is a startup and was jointly funded (until now) by Cisco and EMC …
EMC had an option to bring in VCE after five years and that's what they did. It might not be obvious at first but Cisco is in a uncomfortable position. Bear with me for a second.
EMC reps have never been comped on the V+C part of VCE, only on the storage part of the stack. This is going to change and they'll probably get spiffs/incentives/quotas in the next few quarters. We can expect EMC' hyper-aggressive salesforce to push Vblock *hard* in all their accounts. (Compare it to Oracles Exadata push for industry comparison)
At the same time, non-UCS VSPEX system support and engineering will probably end up with VCE. Same goes for EMC' hyper-converged offerings (EVO:RAIL and EVO:RACK, Merlin or Marvin or whatever) and experimental server projects such as Supermicro or Lenovo OEM and/or these nice engines they have for the VMAX.
This is really bad news for Cisco as VCE owns 25% of Cisco's UCS business and the expected explosive growth over the next few quarters will push this share even higher. Cisco suddenly has no more say in VCE's strategy and they would be wise not to piss them off as VCE suddenly has options (in the long term, nothing's going to change in the short term, I think). At the same time they have all their other partners like NetApp and Pure, and of course SimpliVity and Whiptail/Invicta, whom they need to please or develop, respectively.
The balancing act for Cisco's Data Center Division (UCS) will be fncking epic. Now, EMC' future with Vmware and general outlook (Cloud, Tucci, Federation, startups, etc) is another story entirely but for the next two years or so this is going to be one of the more exciting stories in IT to watch, one way or the other.
" At the same time they have all their other partners like NetApp and Pure, and of course SimpliVity and Whiptail/Invicta, whom they need to please or develop, respectively."
And dont forget SmartStack. The way Nimble is going they will be a force to be reckoned with soon enough, if they arent already.
Its not as if EMC really needs Cisco's cash, so they brought VCE in-house. That leaves Cisco in the awkward situation of being very much a junior partner in a venture that moves a good chunk of their UCS business, and EMC could go out searching for other computing/networking partners.
Still, on the whole its been a good investment for Cisco, its just that VCE may or may not be sustainable as a Cisco UCS sales channel.
*Current NetApp & Former EMC employee here
I don't think we are going to see the reps push it any harder than usual. EMC has had crazy spiffs in place for V-Block and it still didn't sell. There used to be 5-7G incentives in place depending on the model. Oh you want to go to Presidents club? Better sell a V-Block otherwise you can't go.
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I don't think we are going to see the reps push it any harder than usual. EMC has had crazy spiffs in place for V-Block and it still didn't sell. There used to be 5-7G incentives in place depending on the model. Oh you want to go to Presidents club? Better sell a V-Block otherwise you can't go.
</quote>
I don't think you have thought this through.
EMC reps get comped on the the EMC part of a deal. Plenty of VSPEX and other infrastructure deals out there in established accounts. From now on reps get paid, if they sell a Vblock, not only on the EMC part, but on UCS, Nexus, Vmware, services, and maintenance. Considering that the EMC portion was only 30ish% of a Vblock I would cautiously wager that EMC sales reps will pitch Vblock in each and every installed account.
The problem will be current partners in these accounts, who'll either need to get VCE sales accreditations to get VCE deal registrations and service delivery certifications to perform services for VCE. There will be a lot of rumbling and complaining in the channel, but the EMC reps were never really channel friendly anyway.
To think that EMC' salesforce won't be on this like white on rice is a serious misreading of current industry realities.
Does anybody think a vBlock would be as appealing or successful as it is (to whatever degree that is) if it didn't use Cisco UCS? I contend UCS is what made the solution different from a Dell or HP (similar) solution. IBM's former Flex product doesn't matter at this point so I'll exclude it from further comments. EMC + VMware + HP ProLiant = boring. Same for Dell. Cisco completed the solution. VCE's services gave it the services wrapper with luxury feel. I personally think it was too expensive, over-hyped and inflexible solution but to each their own.
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