Partners: HPE Acquisition Will Put The Whammy On Plexxi Offerings For Dell EMC, Nutanix
Hewlett Packard Enterprises' deal to acquire Plexxi, a software defined data fabric networking technology provider, is likely to put an and to Plexxi partnerships with Dell EMC and Nutanix, solution providers said.
"There is no way HPE is going to keep the Plexxi partnerships with Dell EMC and Nutanix when this deal closes," said Raymond Tuchman, CEO of Experis Technology Group, a fast-growing Potomac, Md.-based HPE private cloud powerhouse. "If the Plexxi deal is as good as the SimpliVity acquisition this is going to be a big advantage for HPE vs. Dell EMC and Nutanix."
When HPE acquired SimpliVity last year for $650 million, it ended SimpliVity development on Cisco, Lenovo and Huawei systems. "This deal with Plexxi looks similar to the move HPE made when it acquired SimpliVity last year and took out SimpliVity partnerships with Cisco and Lenovo," said Tuchman.
Michael Goldstein, CEO of LAN Infotech, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., solution provider, said HPE is sure to keep Plexxi off limits to Dell EMC and Nutanix. "It's a battle of software defined capabilities between HPE and Dell EMC and Nutanix," he said. "HPE will now own the Plexxi intellectual proprety. It doesn’t make sense to share it with Dell EMC and Nutanix."
Goldstein credited HPE CEO Antonio Neri with driving big software defined infrastructure differentiation with acquisitions like Plexxi, SimpliVity and Nimble. "It’s clear that HPE is looking to dominate the next generation software defined infrastructure market," he said.
HPE Senior Vice President & General Manager of the company's Software Defined and Cloud Group Ric Lewis announced the deal to acquire Plexxi in a blog post on Tuesday.
Terms of the deal with the eight-year-old Nashua, N.H. startup with 100 employees were not disclosed.
With regard to the Plexxi alliances with Dell EMC and Nutanix, an HPE spokesperson said the company will be sharing details on how HPE and Plexxi will be working together in the coming months. "We are excited about the opportunities ahead," the spokesperson said.
Plexxi announced just a week ago its support for the Plexxi HCN Reference Architecture for Nutanix Enterprise Coud OS Software. "This new reference architecture enables businesses to take full advantage of the power, simplicity and security of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform all while making it simple to deploy, operate and expand, said Plexxi in a blog post.
Plexxi also announced in February support for Dell Networking Z9100-ON and Dell Networking S4048-ON data center fabric switches. "With Plexxi HCN, Dell customers now can scale data center networks flat and cost-effectively while still delivering unrestricted performance for all application workloads," said Plexxi.
Dell, for its part, said it does not have a commercial or technology partnership with Plexxi, even though Plexxi mentions support for Dell solutions.
CRN reached out to Nutanix and Plexxi for comment but neither company immediately returned a request for comment.
In the HPE blog post, Lewis said the Plexxi acquisition will power HPE's hyperconverged Simplivity offering and its Synergy composable infrastructure with a "next-generation data network fabric that can automatically create or re-balance bandwidth to workload needs," said Lewis. "This will increase agility and efficiency, and accelerate how quickly companies deploy applications and draw business value from their data."
Tuchman, for his part, said Experis is seeing increasing momentum with SimpliVity as a backup and recovery platform for customers. In fact, Experis has recently closed two deals with Washington, D.C.-area law firms that are replacing traditional storage/compute environments with SimpliVity.
The driving factor in both of those deals was the robust backup/recovery capabilities of SimpliVity, said Tuchman. He said the product's ability to recover a one terabyte virtual machine in just 60 seconds is blowing customers away. "There is no vendor I know of that can match that," he said. "It can take 20 minutes or an hour to recover a remote site with traditional infrastructure. With SimpliVity it takes a couple of minutes."
In the Plexxi blog post on the acquisition, Plexxi CEO Rich Napolitano said HPE and Plexxi's "values and vision for the future are closely aligned."
"We share the same mission, to help the enterprise effectively leverage modern IT to accelerate their business in the digital age. With the combination of Plexxi’s innovative network technology and HPE’s software-defined infrastructure and global reach, customers have more options than ever before to chart their own course and maintain competitive edge," said Napolitano. "In the coming months, we will be sharing additional details on how HPE and Plexxi will be working together."