EMC Appointment: Partners Positive About Sakac's New Post Atop VCE

Partners see "tremendous upside" to EMC's decision to make Chad Sakac president of VCE, the company's converged infrastructure unit, which is being renamed as the EMC Converged Platforms Division.

Sakac, a top engineering exec at EMC known for his smarts and his influential Virtual Geek blog, was made head of the converged division Wednesday. He takes the helm from Praveen Akkiraju, who has run VCE since 2012. Akkiraju will stay on at EMC as an adviser to David Goulden, president of EMC Information Infrastructure, according to an EMC statement.

"Chad is extremely partner-friendly," said Brendan Lynch, CEO of Eastern Computer Exchange, a Milford, Conn.-based VCE partner. "I see tremendous upside for our customers, for EMC and us, the partners. This is a very good thing."

[Related: VCE Execs: We're The 'Go-To' Vendor In Converged Infrastructure]

"Chad's a very bright guy, and he'll bring incredible structure and order to all the current VCE processes," Lynch said. In particular, Lynch said, he is hopeful that Sakac will help EMC scale its converged infrastructure business to a greater extent than VCE has to date.

Sakac "has been a massive, vocal supporter of VCE," said one former VCE executive who didn't wish to be named. "He's always been an advocate, and I think it's a good fit. It's part of the journey from being a joint venture to being integrated into EMC, and sometimes that requires different people and some adjustments."

Sakac takes on the new role in addition to being EMC's president of global systems engineering, a position he's held for three years. With its new name and new president, VCE and its personnel will be more deeply integrated into EMC, Goulden said in a statement.

EMC said the changes are meant to create tighter alignment within its "federation" of companies and to simplify technology options and deployments for enterprise customers.

VCE started as a joint venture between EMC and Cisco, which maintains a 10 percent stake in the company. Its key product is its Vblock converged infrastructure system. Still, VCE is evolving, and so is its relationship with Cisco. In May, VCE launched its VxRack line of hyper-converged infrastructure appliances. Unlike Vblock and VxBlock systems, which use Cisco UCS servers and Nexus switches, VxRack uses white box servers.

EMC is set to be acquired by Dell in a $67 billion deal between May and October. Top execs at each company, as well as Cisco, have said they'd remain committed to VCE after the merger.

PUBLISHED JAN. 6, 2016