HP learns to walk and chew virtual gum at the same time

HP's decision to bail out of VMware's EVO:RAIL hyper-converged happiness project wasn't due to any dissatisfaction with the product. Instead, HP decided it could not ask its salesforce and channel to wrap their heads around EVO:RAIL and its own StorVirtual-based hyper-converged products, so chose to go it alone.

So said Raghu Raghuram, VMware's veep and general manager for all things software-defined data centre, in a chat with El Reg at VMworld 2015. VMware, he said, accepted HP's reasoning. No VMware crockery or telephone handsets therefore met a violent fate upon receipt of the EVO:RAIL news.

It's not hard to see why the news was taken well, because at VMworld HP signed up for a “global sales, support and go-to-market agreement” to resell and do services for VMware's NSX. VMware's very pleased with that and will certify bits of HP networking kit for NSX.

HP's also announced a new Converged Architecture 700 that blends its own BladeSystem, 3PAR Storage and OneView with vSphere and VMware vRealize Operations. The 700 is being sold with the usual “if it's all integrated you'll have complex workloads running on it about thirteen seconds after the power plug goes into the wall” story.

The soon-to-split company has also decided it needs a Software-Defined Infrastructure consulting practice, more VDI goodies based on VMware Horizon 6.1 and NVIDIA Grid 2.0, and even new HP-conducted training courses for vSphere 6.0.

A cynic might remark that HP didn't have the bandwidth to sell EVO:RAIL and StorVirtual, but can figure out how to sell both NSX and OpenFlow. But such folk are hard to find here at The Reg. ®

VMware paid the author's airfares and accommodation costs to attend VMworld. The company also provided him with Moscone Centre food, a fact we mention as said comestibles are not likely to engender positive bias.