Simplicity Amid Complication

Since he took the helm at VCE, now known as EMC’s Converged Platforms Division, Chad Sakac (pictured) has been busy spreading the word about the benefits of hyper-convergence.

But with a broad portfolio of hyper-converged offerings and configurations, EMC is butting up against competition from plain-old converged infrastructure and from software-defined storage.

On his "Virtual Geek" blog, Sakac recently sorted out the differences between converged infrastructure [CI] and hyper-converged infrastructure [HCI], and laid  out for customers which of EMC’s variety of hyper-convergence offerings is best in several situations.

Still, Sakac’s explanation seeks to simplify things just as they’re about to get a little more complicated. Dell’s pending acquisition of EMC will land Dell’s FX series servers within EMC hyper-converged systems. Dell also has a tight relationship with hyper-convergence startup Nutanix, and a hotly competitive relationship with Cisco, which partners closely with EMC on converged systems.