For nearly ten years, Scale Computing has been driving the hyperconverged solutions market forward. The company recently announced a new joint solution with Google called HC3 Cloud Unity, which is touted as the first true hybrid cloud solution in the market. To find out more, I spoke with Jeff Ready, CEO of Scale Computing.

VMblog:  Tell me about your partnership with Google that you announced recently.

Jeff Ready: We recently announced HC3 Cloud Unity, a new partnership with Google that has been two years in the making. Simply put, HC3 Cloud Unity is a true hybrid cloud solution that makes it simple for organizations to move applications into the cloud or on-premises. HC3 Cloud Unity combines Scale's HC3 hyperconverged platform and Google Cloud Platform on the same LAN.

With HC3 running both on-premises and in the Google Cloud, HC3 Cloud Unity creates a virtual LAN that seamlessly bridges the on-prem local LAN with the private virtual network on GCP. This makes it easy for IT organizations to integrate the resources of the cloud with their local resources, combining storage, compute and virtualization in a single solution running on the same LAN.

VMblog:  What do you see as the biggest barrier to cloud adoption?

Ready: One of the biggest barriers in the past was the inability to easily move applications to and from the cloud without massive reconfiguration of the environment or rewrites of the applications themselves. It is not uncommon for organizations to have legacy applications that are five, 10 or even more years old. These applications were not built for the cloud - they were built to run on-prem.

With HC3 Cloud Unity, organizations no longer have to use or create different applications for the cloud. They can utilize their apps created for on-prem and can now run them on the Google Cloud Platform with no reconfiguration at all. This is a game changer for end users, channel partners and MSPs globally, because it allows organizations to simply move their applications to and from the cloud with just a few clicks. This is the first true hybrid cloud offering in the competitive landscape.

VMblog:  What's your connection with WinMagic?

Ready: We're excited to have recently announced a partnership with WinMagic, which is a leader in encryption and security solutions. In today's world, the ability to control and managing data flow in and out of an organization has become increasingly difficult. To overcome this, enterprises need a solution capable of keeping ahead of security issues and the ever-evolving compliance regulations.

Working with WinMagic puts our customers and partners in control. It also helps reduce security risks with one simple easy to use solution that overlays our HC3 platform, and allows users to pursue the advantages of public, private or a hybrid cloud strategy. For example, users of our joint Google HC3 Cloud Unity solution can take advantage of WinMagic persistent encryption for VMs migrating to and from the cloud, and can maintain that security regardless of where the application is physically running and how it moves around.

VMblog:  What do you expect for hybrid cloud in 2018?

Ready: Up until 2017, there has been a focus on the cloud, and a push for complete adoption of the cloud. The reality is that an all-cloud-only model is not ideal for most environments. It is not on-premises versus the cloud. It's on-premises and the cloud.

The truth is organizations have applications and data that needs to be stored on-premises that is sometimes burst into the cloud along with applications that will primarily live only on-premises or only on cloud, depending on the use case.

In 2018 and beyond, the future is hybrid cloud, combining on-premises and the cloud into one. A hybrid cloud model, that incorporates micro-datacenters at the edge, centralized datacenters for cloud and on-premises datacenters, is now a reality for today's businesses.

VMblog:  Finally, readers want to know what we can expect from Scale in the future.

Ready: At Scale, innovation is always driving us. From first coining the term "hyperconvergence" in 2012, to now bringing customers into this cloud-converged environment, we will continue to innovate to meet industry needs while maintaining the simplicity, scalability and performance that is fundamental to the Scale platform.

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