Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2015. Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed article by Yoram Novick, Founder, President and CEO Maxta Inc.
OpenStack will Solidify Hyper-convergence
Integrated Systems
continued to gain traction and mindshare during 2014. Integrated Systems
address the complexity and cost issues associated with building clouds and data
centers to serve the needs of current applications. The Integrated Systems
market is dominated these days by Converged Systems that integrate
independently developed compute, storage and networking products into a single
solution simplifying purchasing and deployment. These solutions simplify
various aspects of IT albeit not addressing all aspects of complexity and cost.
An alternative approach to Converged
Systems is Hyper-Convergence. Hyper-Convergence is a deeper form of convergence,
leveraging a single hardware platform, namely x86 servers. Compute, storage and
networking services are implemented in software running on top of a cluster of
x86 servers. The main advantages of Hyper-Convergence versus Convergence are
higher levels of scalability and agility as well as lower acquisition cost.
Traditionally, cloud and
data centers built with Integrated Systems had limited scalability due to the
limitations of legacy cloud orchestration software. Therefore, the advantages
of Hyper-Convergence couldn't be realized. On the other hand, the maturity and
evolutionary nature of Converged Systems were highly valued by customers.
My prediction is that in
2015 OpenStack is going to dramatically change the Integrated System landscape.
OpenStack gained significant traction in 2014 and is becoming a major platform
for establishing clouds and data centers. The advantages of OpenStack are openness
and higher levels of scalability and agility that address the needs of many applications.
Existing Converged Systems are based on closed cloud orchestration software and
thus don't provide the openness and choice that customers expect. Retrofitting Converged
Systems to leverage OpenStack is not trivial and cannot meet the scalability
and agility levels of Hyper-Convergence.
Hyper-convergence, on the
other hand, provides a better fit for OpenStack, supporting higher levels of
scalability and agility. Initially, OpenStack is expected to gain adoption at
managed service providers, cloud service providers, and large enterprises that
have the staff and expertise to leverage the benefits and value of OpenStack.
Over time, as the OpenStack user base grows, and the eco-system solidifies and simplifies
OpenStack deployments, more enterprises as well as SMBs will leverage it too.
My prediction is that
during 2015 the leading OpenStack distributions will certify and support
Hyper-Convergence solutions that are based on KVM and Linux Containers with
support for high availability and data availability thus making
Hyper-Convergence the leading form of Integrated Systems for OpenStack.
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Yoram
Novick, Founder,
President and CEO Maxta Inc.
With a proven track record
of building successful startups, and deep expertise in enterprise systems,
storage, and software, Yoram drives Maxta's vision and strategy. Prior to
founding Maxta, he founded Topio, known for its data replication and recovery
prowess, and led the company as its CEO from inception until it was acquired by
NetApp. Following the Topio acquisition, he served as Vice President and
General Manager of NetApp's Data Replication Business Unit. Prior to Topio,
Yoram spent 13 years at IBM in storage research and development capacities. He
holds 25 patents in the systems and storage domains and sits on several boards
of directors, guiding other entrepreneurial tech companies along their own
paths to market success. He holds a bachelor's and a master's degree in
computer science from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, both Summa CumLaude.