Q&A: Dell and Microsoft talk virtualisation complexity

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Microsoft and Dell have teamed up on numerous occasions, but this time the two tech giants are taking on the world of virtualisation.

They believe there is too much complexity throughout the technology, holding back implementations and blocking customers from using it to its full advantage.

We talk to Bryan Jones, marketing director for public and large enterprise at Dell, and Ed Anderson, director for server and cloud marketing at Microsoft, to see how the partnership can help customers, as well as their approaches to the market.

How are Dell and Microsoft approaching this partnership?

Bryan Jones (BJ): From a Dell perspective, this is a big part of a solution we are driving around data centre transformation with our VIS (Virtual Integrated System) architecture.

Our architecture is really centred on data centre transformation and convergence of infrastructure; treating server, storage and networking as a single infrastructure and the ability to work across multiple vendors from [these] perspectives.

In fact we could implement this infrastructure and not buy a single piece of Dell hardware – we are literally the only provider in this space that does that.

But the whole architecture is built on open, capable and affordable, and the ability to offer choice. The key thing we are centred around is giving people the choice from an infrastructure perspective, so pick the right server, storage and networking.

We would love for it to be ours but we understand it won’t always be.

So when you look at a customer and you see there is something better for them out there, you are really willing to steer them away from Dell?

BJ: We are certainly not going to sign up for anything that is going to create dissatisfaction for the customer.

So, if the storage architecture that we are proposing to them isn’t going to meet their challenges, they won’t be [pleased] and we are not going to sign up for that.

The key thing was how do we help customers implement infrastructure faster but more importantly how do we help them redeploy – when applications change and when businesses change. A big part of that is getting the right virtualisation strategy in place.

So, our strategy and our solution works across Microsoft and VMware from a virtualisation perspective.

One of the key things we see as an enabler in the virtualisation space is changing the economics and the complexity level of virtualisation, which is where Microsoft comes in with Hyper V. So we have a very complimentary strategy as Microsoft drives deeper in to the virtualisation discussion with Hyper V, we, from an enabling technology perspective, have the ability to actually make that a reality for customers.

This multi-hypervisors capability was a critical component of our VIS architecture so it just makes sense for us to partner with Microsoft today and start to show customers a different way, a different economic way, a different way to manage virtualisation.

One of the things that fascinated us about the Microsoft solution too was with Systems Centre, you could manage a Hyper V environment [and] you could manage a VMware environment. You can’t do that with the VMware tools.

There is also this synergy around how you help customers drive virtualisation deeper into the enterprise and we are convinced that the only way customers are really going to get to this 80 per cent or 90 per cent virtualisation rate that they claim to want to get to is through a multi-visor strategy.

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