Hitachi Vantara and Cisco have partnered to offer a joint hybrid cloud solution that can alleviate these concerns. Hitachi EverFlex is integrated with Cisco Powered Hybrid Cloud to provide managed services, reduce network complexity, and lower the total cost of ownership. EverFlex supports multiple as-a-service offerings on a consumption-based model, so customers can ramp up or down their managed services as needed.
In a recent webinar, Alexandra Zagury, vice president of partner managed services and aaS sales at Cisco, and Jeb Horton, senior vice president of Global Pathways, Solutions, and Enablement at Hitachi Vantara, discussed the importance of partner ecosystems and how full-stack integration better supports managed services.
Supporting Partner Ecosystems
Partner-led solutions and supporting partner ecosystems are critical to success—for customers and vendors. Strong integration across products supports customer choice but doesn’t undercut performance or management.
“The partner-to-partner trend is extremely important,” Zagury said. “About 46 percent of Cisco’s total addressable market is going to be sold as a managed service.” That represents a $161 billion market, and the market grows to more than $350 billion when factoring in partner services, she said.
“We realize customers have competitive products,” Horton said.
Multivendor environments can benefit from Hitachi’s HyperOps platform, which creates a sort of self-service portal for customers with hybrid environments. HyperOps uses AI, intelligent business process management (IBPA), and robotic processes automation (RPA) to automate multivendor systems and their interactions with each other in a fully connected environment. It brings data across from Cisco and other vendor products to simplify management and improve visibility in the hybrid cloud ecosystem.
Data Storage and Full Stack Management
Customers are facing a “massive data management problem,” Horton said. More data requires more data storage, and network administrators need management insights to monitor workloads, utilization, reliability, and security.
Artificial intelligence has spawned an “explosion of data workloads,” said Zagury, which can overwhelm networks and administrators. In addition, government and international regulations and market-specific requirements affect each client’s data management, access, and reporting needs. The Hitachi Vantara - Cisco partnership delivers the technology to address these concerns.
Customers with Hitachi Vantara storage solutions and Cisco Hybrid Cloud offerings can benefit from Hitachi Vantara’s full stack of managed services for converged environments through the integration of the Everflex suite of services. The combined offering supports hybrid cloud observability, automation, predictive analytics, and unified management.
Reducing Customer Costs
When assessing managed services for customers, Hitachi Vantara looks at total cost of ownership, assessing the current infrastructure, planning future needs, and optimizing labor costs. The flexible, scalable services are based on a consumption model and can be co-managed as needed, depending on staffing levels and experience. Zagury praised Hitachi Vantara’s approach.
“You really size that customer solution according to the TCO, and price it accordingly. That is unique,” Zagury said. “We haven’t seen a lot of our partners approach it that way.”
Hybrid cloud infrastructure enables customers to optimize infrastructure and boost sustainability through more efficient power consumption.
“With the Hitachi Vantara and Cisco solution together, we’re accomplishing all these really critical outcomes together,” Zagury said.
Image Credit: Hitachi Vantara