Wednesday, August 08, 2018

Path to Modern PC Client Automation is Paved with Hyperconverged Infrastructure for New Jersey College

Transcript of a discussion on how the combination of hyperconverged infrastructure and virtual desktop infrastructure are making the task of deploying and maintaining the latest end-user workspaces far simpler and cheaper than ever.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer podcast series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing discussion on digital transformation success stories.

Our next hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) use case discussion explores how a New Jersey college has embarked on the time-saving, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) modernization journey. We will now hear how the combination of HCI and VDI are making the task of deploying and maintaining the latest end-user devices far simpler -- and cheaper than ever before.

Here to help us explore the embrace of a new digital and data-driven culture from the desktop to the hyper-efficient core, are our guests. Please join me in welcoming Tom Gillon, Director of Network and User Services at County College of Morris (CCM) in Randolph, New Jersey. Welcome, Tom.

Tom Gillon: Thank you.

Gardner: We are also with Michael Gilchrist, Assistant Director of Network Systems at County College of Morris (CCM). Welcome, Michael.

Michael Gilchrist: Thank you.

Gardner: And we are here with Felise Katz, CEO of PKA Technologies, Inc. Welcome, Felise.

Felise Katz: Thanks, Dana.

Gardner: What are the trends driving your needs at County College of Morris to modernize and simplify your personal computer (PC) architecture?

Flexibility for all, always

Gillon: We need to be flexible and agile in terms of getting software to the students, when they need it, where they need it.

Gillon
With physical infrastructure that really isn’t possible. So we realized that VDI was the solution to meet our goals -- to get the software where the students need it, when they need it, and so that’s a top trend that got us to this point.

Gardner: And is the simplicity of VDI deployments something you are looking at universally, or is this more specific to just students?

Gillon: We are looking to deploy VDI all throughout the college: Faculty, staff, and students. We started out with a pilot of 300 units that we mostly put out in labs and in common areas for the students. But now we are replacing older PCs that the faculty and staff use as well.

Gardner: VDI has been around for a while, and for the first few years there was a lot of promise, but there was also some lag from complications in that certain apps and media wouldn’t run properly; there were network degradation issues. We’ve worked through a lot of that, but what are some of your top concerns, Michael, when it comes to some of those higher-order infrastructure performance issues that you have to conquer before you get to the proper payoff from VDI?
Get Your Gorilla Guide
To HCI Implementation Strategies
Gilchrist: You want to make sure that the user experience is the same as what they would experience on a physical device, otherwise they will not accept it.

Just having the horse power -- nowadays these servers are so powerful, and now you can even get graphics processing units (GPUs) in there -- you can run stuff like AutoCAD or Adobe and still give the user the same experience that they would normally have on a physical device. That’s what we are finding. Pretty good so far.

Gardner: Felise, as a Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Platinum Partner, you have been through this journey before, so you know how it was rough-and-tumble there for a while with VDI. How has that changed from your perspective at PKA Technologies?

Katz: When HPE made the acquisition of SimpliVity that was the moment that defined a huge game-changer because it enabled us, as a solution provider, to bring the right technology to CCM. That was huge.

Gardner: When you’re starting out on an IT transition, you have to keep the wings on the airplane while you’re changing the engines, or vice versa. You have to keep things going while you are doing change. Tom, how did you manage that? How did you keep your students getting their apps? How have you been able to swap things out in a way that hasn’t been disruptive?

Gillon: The beauty of VDI is that we can switch out a lab completely with thin clients in about an hour. And we didn’t realize that going in. We thought it would take us most of the day. And then when we did it, we were like, “Oh my God, we are done.” We were able to go in there first thing in the morning and knock it out before the students even came in.

That really helped us to get these devices out to where the students need them and to not be disruptive to them.
That really helped us to get these devices out to where the students need them and not be disruptive to them.

Gardner: Tom, how did it work from your perspective in terms of an orderly process? How was the support from your partners like PKA? Do you get to the point where this becomes routine?

Gillon: PKA has the expertise in this area. We worked with them previously on an Aruba wireless network deployment project, and we knew that’s who we wanted to work with, because they were professional and thorough.

Moving to the thin client systems deployments, we contacted PKA and they put together a solution that worked well for us. We had not been aware of SimpliVity combined with HPE. They determined that this would be the best path for us, and it turned out to be true. They came in and we worked with HPE, setting this up and deploying it. Michael did a lot of that work with HPE. It was very simple to do. We were surprised at how simple it was.

Academic pressure 

Gardner: Felise, as a solution partner that specializes in higher education, what’s different from working at a college campus environment from, say, a small- to medium-sized business (SMB) or another type of enterprise? Is there something specific about a college environment, such as the number of apps, the need for certain people and groups in the college to have different roles within responsibilities? How did it shake out?

Katz: That’s an interesting question. As a solution provider, as an owner of a business, we always put our best foot forward. It really doesn’t matter whether it’s an academic institution or a commercial customer, it always has to be done in the right way.

Katz
As a matter of fact, in academics it’s even more profound, and a lot more pressured, because you are dealing with students, you are dealing with faculty, and you are dealing with IT staff. Once we are in a “go” mode, we are under a lot of pressure. We have a limited time span between semesters -- or vacations and holidays -- where we have to be around to help them to get it up and running.

We have to make sure that the customer is enabled. And with these guys at CCM, they were so fabulous to work with. They enabled us to help them to do more with less -- and that’s what the solution is all about. It’s all about simplification. It’s all about modernization. It’s all about being more efficient. And as Michael said so eloquently, it’s all about the experience for the students. That’s what we care about.
That’s Right for Your Needs
Gardner: Michael, where are you on your VDI-enablement journey? We heard that you want to go pervasively to VDI. What have you had to put in place -- in terms of servers in the HPE SimpliVity HCI case -- to make that happen?

Gilchrist: So far, we have six servers in total. Three servers in each of our two data centers that we have on campus, for high redundancy. That’s going to allow us to cover our initial pilot of 300 thin clients that we are putting out there.

As far as the performance of the system goes, we are not even scratching the surface in terms of the computing or RAM available for those first 300 endpoints.

When it comes to getting more thin clients, I think we’re going to be able to initially tack on more thin clients to the initial subset of six servers. And as we grow, the beauty of SimpliVity is that we just buy another server, rack it up, and bolt it in -- and that’s it. It’s just plug and play.

Gardner: In order to assess how well this solution is working, let’s learn more about CCM. It’s 50 years old. What’s this college all about?

Data-driven college transformation 

Gillon: We are located in North Central New Jersey. We have an enrollment of about 8,000 students per semester; that’s for credit. We also have a lot of non-credit students coming and going as well.

As you said, we are 50-years-old, and I’ve been there almost 23 years. I was the second person hired in the IT Department.

I have seen a lot come and go, and we actually just last year inaugurated our third college president, just three presidents in 50 years. It’s a very stable environment, and it’s really a great place to work.

Gardner: I understand that you have had with this newest leadership more of a technical and digital transformation focus. Tell us how the culture of the college has changed and how that may have impacted your leaping into some of the more modern infrastructure to support VDI.

Gillon: Our new president is very data-driven. He wants data on everything, and frankly we weren't in a position to provide that.

We also changed CIOs. Our new CIO came in about a year after the new president, and he has also a strong data background. He is more about data than technology. So, with that focus we really knew that we had to get systems in place that are capable of quick transitions, and this HCI system really did the job for us. We are looking to expand further beyond that.

Gardner: Felise, I have heard other people refer to hyperconverged infrastructure architectures like SimpliVity as a gift that keeps giving. Clearly the reason to get into this was to support the VDI, which is a difficult workload. But there are also other benefits.
The simplification from HCI has uncomplicated their capability for growth and for scale.

What have been some of the other benefits that you have been able to demonstrate to CCM that come with HCI? Is it the compression, the data storage savings, or a clear disaster recovery path that they hadn’t had before? What do you see as some of the ancillary benefits?

Katz: It's all of the above. But to me -- and I think to both Tom and Michael -- it's really the simplification, because [HCI] has uncomplicated their capability for growth and for scale.

Look, they are in a very competitive business, okay, attracting students, as Tom said. That’s tough, that's where they have to make the difference, they have to make a difference when that student arrives on campus with his, I don’t know, how many devices, right?

One student, five devices 

Gillon: It averages five now, I think.

Katz: Five devices that come on board. How do you contend with that, besides having this huge pipe for all the data and everything else that they have to enable? And then you have new ways of learning that everybody has to step up and enable. It's not just about a classroom; it’s a whole different world. And when you’re in a rural part of New Jersey, where you’re looking to attract students, you have to make sure you are at the top of your game.

Gardner: Expectations are higher than ever, and the younger people are even more demanding because they haven’t known anything else.

Katz: Yes, just think about their Xbox, their cell phones, and more devices. It's just a huge amount. And it's not only for them, it's also for your college staff.

Gardner: We can’t have a conversation about IT infrastructure without getting into the speeds and feeds a little bit. Tell us about your SimpliVity footprint, energy, maintenance, and operating costs. What has this brought to you at CCM? You have been doing this for 23 years, you know what a high-maintenance server can be like. How has this changed your perspective on keeping a full-fledged infrastructure up and running?

Ease into IT

Gillon: There are tremendous benefits, and we are seeing that. The six servers that we have put in, they are replacing a lot of other devices. If we would have gone with a different solution, we would have had a rack full of servers to contend with. With this solution, we are putting three devices in each of our server rooms to handle the load of our initial 300 VDI deployments -- and hopefully more soon.

There are a lot of savings involved, such as power. A lot of our time is being saved because we are not a big shop. Besides Michael and myself, I have a network administrator, and another systems administrator -- that’s it, four people. We just don't have the time to do a lot of things we need to do -- and this system solves a lot of those issues.

Gilchrist: From a resources utilization standpoint, the deduplication and compression that the SimpliVity system provides is just insane. I am logically provisioning hundreds of terabytes of information in my VMware system -- and only using 1.5 terabytes physically. And just the backup and restore, it's kind of fire and forget. You put this stuff in place and it really does do what they say. You can restore large virtual machines (VMs) in about one or two seconds and then have it back up and running in case something goes haywire. It just makes my life a lot easier.

I’m no longer having to worry about, “Well, who was my back-up vendor? Or who is my storage area network (SAN) vendor? And then there’s trying to combine all of those systems into one. Well, HPE SimpliVity just takes care of all of that. It’s a one-stop shop; it’s a no-brainer.

Gardner: All in one, Felise, is that a fair characterization?
Get Your Gorilla Guide
To HCI Implementation Strategies
Katz: That is a very, very true assessment. My goal, my responsibility is to bring forward the best solution for my customers and having HPE in my corner with this is huge. It gives me the advantage to help my clients, and so we are able to put together a really great solution for CCM.

Gardner: There seems to be a natural progression with IT infrastructure adoption patterns. You move from bare metal to virtualization, then you move from virtualization to HCI, and then that puts you on a path to private cloud -- and then hybrid cloud. And in doing this modernization, you get used to the programmatic approach to infrastructure, so composable infrastructure.

Do you feel that this progression is helping you modernize your organization? And where might that lead to, Tom?

Gillon: I do. With the experience we are gaining with SimpliVity, we see that this can go well beyond VDI, and we are excited about that. We are getting to a point where our current infrastructure is getting a little long in the tooth. We need to make some decisions, and right now the two of us are like, this is only decision we want to make. This is the way we are going to go.

Gardner: I have also read that VDI is like the New York of IT -- if you can do it there, you can do it anywhere. So what next workloads do you have in mind? Is this enterprise resource planning (ERP), is it business apps? What?

Gillon: All of the above. We are definitely looking to put some of our server loads into the VDI world, and just the benefits that SimpliVity gives to us in terms of business continuity and redundancy, it really is a no-brainer for us.

And yes, ERP, we have our ERP system currently virtualized, and the way Michael has things set up now, it's going to be an easy transition for us when we get to that point.

Gardner: We have talked a lot about the hardware, but we also have to factor in the software. You have been using the VMware Horizon approach to VDI and workspaces, and that’s great, but what about moving toward cloud?

Do you want to have more choice in your hypervisor? Does that set you on another path to make choices about private cloud? What comes next in terms of what you support on such a great HCI platform?

A cloudy future?

Gillon: We have decisions to make when it comes to cloud. We are doing some things in the cloud now, but there are some things we don't want to do in the cloud. And HPE has a lot of solutions.

We recently attended a discussion with the CEO of HPE [Antonio Neri] about where they are headed, and they say hybrid is the way to go. You are going to have some on-premises workloads, you are going to have some off-premises. And that's where we see CCM going as well.

Gardner: What advice would you give to other organizations that are maybe later in starting out with VDI? What might save them a step or two?
Get yourself a good partner because there are so many things that you don't know about these systems.

Gillon: First thing, get yourself a good partner because there are so many things that you don't know about these systems. And having a good partner like PKA, they brought a lot to the table. They could have easily provided a solution to us that was just a bunch of servers.

Gilchrist: Yes, they brought in the expertise. We didn’t know about SimpliVity, and once they showed us everything that it can do, we were skeptical. But it just does it. We are really happy with it, and I have to say, having a good partner is step number one.

Gardner: Felise, what recommendations do you have for organizations that are just now dipping their toe into workloads like VDI? What is it about HCI in particular that they should consider?

Look to the future 

Katz: If they are looking for flexible architecture, if they are looking for the agility, to be able to make those moves down the road -- and that's where their minds are – then they really have to do the due diligence. Tom, Michael and their team did. They were able understand what their needs are, what right requirements are for them -- not just for today but also going down the road to the future.

When you adopt a new architecture, you are displacing a lot of your older methodologies, too. It’s a different world, a hybrid world. You need to be able to move, and to move the workloads back and forth.

It’s a great time right now. It's a great place to be because things are working, and they are clicking. We have the reference architectures available now to help, but it’s really first about doing their homework.

CCM is really a great team to work with. It's really a pleasure, and it’s a lot of fun.

And I would be remiss not to say, I have a great team. From my sales to my technical: Strategic Account Manager Angie Moncada, Systems Engineer Patrick Shelley, and Vice President of Technology Russ Chow, they were just all-in with them. That makes a huge difference when you also connect with HPE on the right solutions. So that’s really been great.
That’s Right for Your Needs
Gardner: I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. We’ve been exploring how a New Jersey college has embarked on a time-saving virtual desktop infrastructure modernization journey. And we have learned how the combination of HCI and VDI is making the task of deploying and maintaining the latest end-user devices far simpler and cheaper in practice than ever before.

So please join me in thanking our guests, Tom Gillon, Director of Network and User Services at County College of Morris in Randolph, New Jersey. Thank you, Tom.

Gillon: Thank you.

Gardner: And Michael Gilchrist, Assistant Director of Network Systems at County College of Morris. Thank you so much, Michael.

Gilchrist: Thank you for having me.

Gardner: And Felise Katz, CEO of PKA Technologies, an HPE Platinum Partner. Thank you.

Katz: Dana, thank you so much. It's really been a pleasure.

Gardner: And a big thank you to our audience as well for joining this BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer digital transformation success story discussion.

I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of Hewlett Packard Enterprise-sponsored interviews. Thanks again for listening. Please pass this on to your IT community and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Transcript of a discussion on how the combination of hyperconverged infrastructure and virtual desktop infrastructure are making the task of deploying and maintaining the latest end-user workspaces far simpler and cheaper than ever. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2018. All rights reserved.

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Wednesday, July 25, 2018

How HPE and Docker Together Accelerate and Automate Hybrid Cloud Adoption

Transcript of a discussion on how the combination of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Docker provides a cloud ecosystem tag team to help grease the skids for rapid cloud adoption.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer podcast series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing discussion on digital transformation success stories.

The use of containers has moved from developer infatuation to mainstream cloud adoption accelerant. Docker Inc. has emerged as a leader in the containerization technology field and has greased the skids for multicloud ease of use.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has long embraced containers as a way to move beyond legacy virtualization and to provide both developers and IT operators more choice and efficiency as they seek to embrace hybrid cloud deployment scenarios.

Fish and chips

Like the proverbial chocolate and peanut butter coming together -- or as I like to say, with Docker and HPE, fish and chips -- the two make a nifty alliance and cloud ecosystem tag team.

Here to describe exactly how the Docker and HPE alliance accelerates modern and agile hybrid architectures, we are joined by two executives, Betty Junod, Senior Director of Product and Partner Marketing at Docker. Welcome, Betty.

Junod
Betty Junod: Hello. Thanks for having me, Dana.

Gardner: We’re also here with Jeff Carlat, Senior Director of Global Alliances at HPE. Welcome back, Jeff.

Jeff Carlat: Thanks, Dana. Great to be here.

Gardner: Jeff, how do containers -- and how does Docker specifically -- help data center architects achieve their goals?

Carlat: When you look at the advent of where technology has gone, through virtualization of applications, we are moving into a whole new era where we need much more agility in in applications -- and IT operations.

We believe that our modern infrastructure and our partnership with Docker -- specifically around containers and container orchestration -- provides businesses of all sizes much lower acquisition cost of deploying infrastructure, and ongoing operation costs. And, of course, the game from a business standpoint is all about driving profitability and shareholder stock value.

Second, there is huge value when it comes to Docker and containers around extending the life of legacy applications. Modernizing traditional apps and being able to extend their life and bring them forward to a new modern architecture -- that drives greater efficiencies and lower risk.

Gardner: Betty, how do you see the alignment between what HPE’s long-term vision for hybrid computing and edge-to-core computing and what Docker and containerization can do? How do these align?

Align your apps

Junod: It’s actually a wonderful alignment because what we look at from a Docker perspective is specifically at the application layer and bringing choice, agility, and security at the application layer in a way that can be married with what HPE is doing on the infrastructure layer across the hybrid cloud.

Our customers are saying, “We want to go to cloud, but we know the world is hybrid. We are going to be hybrid. So how do we do that in a way that doesn’t blow up all of our compliance if we make a change? Is this all for new apps? Or what do I do with all the stuff that I have accrued over the decades that’s eating into all of my budget?”
Learn how to extend Docker containers
Across your entire enterprise
When it comes to transformation, it is not just an infrastructure story. It's not just an applications story. It's how do I use those two together in a way that's highly efficient and also very agile for managing the stuff I already have today. Can I make that cheaper, better, stronger -- and how do I enable the developers to build all the new services for the future that are going to provide more services, or better engage with my customers?

Gardner: How does DevOps, in particular, align? There is a lot of the developer allegiance to a Docker value proposition. But IT operators are also very much interested in what HPE is bringing to market, such as better management, better efficiency, and automation.

How are your two companies an accelerant to DevOps?

The future is Agile 

Junod: DevOps is interesting in that it's a word that's been used a lot, along with Agile development. It all stems from the desire for companies to be faster, right? They want to be faster in everything -- faster in delivering new services, faster in time-to-market, as well as faster in responses so they can deliver the best service-level agreements (SLAs) to the customer. It’s very much about how application teams and infrastructure teams work together.

What's great is that Docker brings the ability for developers and operations teams to have a common language, to be able to do their own thing on their timelines without messing up the other side of the house. No more of that Waterfall. Developers can keep developing, shipping, and not break something that the infrastructure teams have set up, and vice versa.
No more of that Waterfall. Developers can keep developing and shipping, and not break something that the infrastructure teams have set up.

Carlat: Let’s be clear, the world is moving to Agile. I mean, companies are delivering continuous releases and ongoing builds. Those companies that can adopt and embrace that are going to get a leg up on their competition and provide better service levels. So the DevOps community and what we are doing is a perfect match. What Docker and HPE are delivering is ideal for that Dev or the Ops environments.

Gardner: When you have the fungibility of moving workloads around the operators benefit, because they get to finally gain more choice about what keeps the trains running on time regardless of who is inside those trains, so to speak.

Let's look at some of the hurdles. What prevents organizations from adopting these hybrid cloud and containerization benefits? What else needs to happen?

Make hybrid happen 

Junod: One of the biggest things we hear from our customers is, “Where should I go when it comes to cloud, and how?” They want to make sure that what they do is future-proof. The want to spend their time being beholden to what their application and customer needs are -- and not specifically a cloud A or cloud B.
Learn more about the Docker
Enterprise Container Platform
Because with the new regulations regarding data privacy and data sovereignty, if you are a multinational company, your data sets are going to have to live in a bunch of different places. People want the ability to have things hybrid. But that presents an application and an infrastructure operational challenge.

What's great in our partnership is that we are saying we are going to provide you the safest way to do hybrid; the fastest way to get there. With the Docker layer on top of that, no matter what cloud you pick to marry with your HPE on-premises infrastructure, it’s seamless portability -- and you can have the same operational governance.

Carlat
Carlat: We also see enterprises, as they move to gain efficiencies, are on a journey. And the journey around containerization and containers in our modern infrastructure can be daunting at times.

One of the barriers, or prohibitions, to active adoption movement is complexity, of not knowing where to start. This is where we are partnering deeply; essentially around the services capabilities, to be able to bring in our consultative capabilities with Pointnext and do assessments and help customers establish that journey and get them through the maturity of testing and development, and progressing into full production-level environments.

Gardner: Is Cloud Technology Partners, a recent HPE acquisition, also a big plus given that they have been of, by, and for cloud -- and very heavily into containers?

Carlat: Yes. That snaps in naturally with the choice in our hybrid strategy. It's a great bridge, if you will, between what applications you may want on-premises and also using Cloud Technology Partners for leveraging an agnostic set of public cloud providers.

Gardner: Betty, when we think about adoption, sometimes too much of a good thing too soon can provide challenges. Is there anything about people adopting containers too rapidly without doing the groundwork -- the blocking and tackling, around management and orchestration, and even automation -- that becomes a negative? And how does HPE factor into that?

Too much transformation, too soon 

Junod: We have learned over these last few years, across 500 different customers, what does and doesn't work. It has a consistent pattern. The companies that say they want to do DevOps, and cloud, and microservices -- and they put all the buzzwords in – and they want to do it all right now for transformation -- those organizations tend to fail. That’s because it's too much change at once, like you mentioned.

What we have worked out by collaborating tightly with our partners as well as our customers is that we say, “Pick one, and maybe not the most complicated application you have. Because you might be deploying on a new infrastructure. You are using a new container model. You are going to need to evolve some of your processes internally.”

And if you are going to do hybrid, when is it hybrid? Is it during the development and test in the cloud, and then to on-premises for production? Or is it cloud bursting for scale up? Or is it for failover replication? If you don't have some of that sorted out before you go, well, then you are just stuck with too much stuff, too much of a good thing.
The companies that say they want to do DevOps, cloud, microservices, and do it all right now -- those organizations tend to fail.

What we have partnered with HPE on -- and especially HPE Pointnext from a services standpoint -- is very much an advisory role, to say let's look at your landscape of applications that you have today and let's assess them. Let’s put them in buckets for you and we can pick one or two to start with. Then, let’s outline what’s going to happen with those. How does this inform your new platform choices?

And then once we get some of those kinks worked out and try some of the operational processes that evolve, then after that it’s almost like a factory. They can just start funneling more in.

Gardner: Jeff, lot of what HPE has been doing is around management and monitoring, governance, being mindful of security and compliance issues. So things like HPE Synergy, things like HPE OneView that have been in the market for a long time, and newer products like HPE OneSphere, how are they factoring into allowing containers to be what they should be without getting out of control?

Hand in glove

Carlat: We have seen containerization evolve. And the modern architectures such as HPE Synergy and OneView are designed and built for bare metal deployment or containers or virtualization. It's all designed -- you say, it's like fish and chips, or it's like a hand in glove in my analogy – to allow customers choice, agility, and flexibility.

Our modern infrastructure is not purely designed for containers. We see a lot of virtualization, and Docker runs great in a virtualized environment as well. So it’s not one or the other. So again, it's like a hand in glove.

Gardner: By the way, I know that the Docker whale isn’t technically a fish, but I like to use it anyway.

Let's talk about the rapid adoption now around hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). How is HCI helping move forward hybrid cloud and particularly for you on the Docker side? Are you seeing it as an accelerant?

Junod: What you are seeing with some of the hyperconverged -- and especially if you relate that over to what's going on with the adoption of containers -- it's all about agility. They want speed and they want to be able to spin things out fast, whether it's compute resources or whether it's application resources. I think it's a nice marriage of where the entire industry wants to go, and what companies are looking for to deliver services faster to our customers.

Carlat: Specifically, hyperconverged represents one of the fastest growing segments in the market for us. And the folks that are adopting hyperconverged clearly want the choice, agility, and rapid simplicity -- and rapid deployment -- of their applications.

Where we are partnering with Docker is taking HPE SimpliVity, our hyperconverged infrastructure, in building out solutions for either test or development and using scripting to be able to deploy this all in a complete environment in 30 minutes or less.

Yes, we are perfectly aligned, and we see hyperconverged as a great area for dropping in infrastructure and testing and development, as well as for midsize IT environments.

Gardner: Recently DockerCon wrapped up. Betty, what was some of the big news there, and how has that had an impact on going to market with a partner like HPE?

Choice, Agility, Security 

Junod: At DockerCon we reemphasized our core pillars: choice, agility, and security, because it's choice in what you want to build. You should as an organization be able to build the best applications with the best components that you feel are right for your application -- and then be able to run that anywhere, in whatever scenario.

Agility is really around speed for delivering new applications, as well as speed for operations teams. Back to DevOps, those two sides have to exist together and in partnership. One can't be fast and the other slow. We want to enable both to be fast together.

And lastly, security. It's really about driving security throughout the lifecycle, from development to production. We want to make sure that we have security built into the entire stack that's supporting the application.
Organizations should be able to build the best applications with the best components and run them anywhere, in any scenario.

We just advanced the platform along those lines. Docker Enterprise Edition 2.0 really started a couple of months ago, so 2.0 is out. But we announced as part of that some technology preview capabilities. We introduced the integration of Kubernetes, which is a very popular container orchestration engine, to allow into our core Enterprise Edition platform and then we added being able to do that all with Windows as well.

So back to choice; it's a Linux and Windows world. You should be able to use any orchestration you like as part of that.

No more kicking the tires 

Carlat: One thing I really noticed at DockerCon was not necessarily just about what Docker did, but the significance of major enterprises -- Fortune 500, Fortune 100 enterprises – that are truly pivoting to the use of containers and Docker specifically on HPE.

No longer are they kicking the tires and evaluating. We are seeing full-scale production roll outs in major, major, major enterprises. The time is right for customers to modernize, embrace, and adopt containers and container orchestration and drop that onto a modern infrastructure or architecture. They can then gain the benefits of the efficiencies, agility, and the security that we have talked about. That is paramount.
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Gardner: Along those lines, do you have examples that show how the combination of what HPE brings to the table and what Docker brings to the table combine in a way that satisfies significant requirements and needs in the market?

Junod: I can highlight two customers. One is Bosch, a major manufacturer in Europe, as well as DaVita healthcare.

What’s interesting is that Bosch began with a lot of organic use of Docker by their developers, spread all over the place. But they said, “Hang on a second, because developers are working with corporate intellectual property (IP), we need to find a way to centralize that, so it better scales for them -- and it’s also secure for us.”

This is one of the first accounts that Docker and HPE worked on together to bring them an integrated solution. They implemented a new development pipeline. Central IT at Bosch is doing the governance, management, and the security around the images and content. But each application development team, no matter where they are around the world, is able to spin up their own separate clusters and then be able to do the development and continuous integration on their own, and then publish the software to a centralized pipeline.

Containers at the intelligent edge 

Carlat: There are use cases across the board and in all industry verticals; healthcare, manufacturing. We are seeing strong interest in adoption outside of the data center and we call that the intelligent edge.

We see that containers, and containers-as-a-service, are joining more compute, data, and analytics at the edge. As we move forward, the same level of choice, agility, and security there is paramount. We see containers as a perfect complement, if you will, at the edge.

Gardner: Right; bringing down the necessary runtime for those edge apps -- but not any more than the necessary runtime. Let’s unpack that a little bit. What is it about container and edge devices, like an HPE Edgeline server, for example, that makes so much sense?

Junod: There is a broad spectrum on the edge. You will have like things like remote offices and retail locations. You will also see things like Industrial Internet ofThings (IIoT). There you have very small devices for data ingest that feed into a distributed server that then ultimately feeds into the core, or the cloud, to do large-scale data analytics. Together this provides real-time insights, and this is an area we have been partnering and working with some of our customers on right now.

Security is actually paramount because -- if you start thinking about the data ingest devices -- we are not talking about, “Oh, hey, I have 100 small offices.” We are talking about millions and millions of very small devices out there that need to run a workload. They have minimal compute resources and they are going to run one or two workloads to collect data. If not sufficiently secured, they can be risk areas for attack.

So, what's really important from a Docker perspective is the security; integrated security that goes from the core -- all the way to the edge. Our ability, from a software layer, to provide trusted transport and digital signatures and the locking down of the runtime along the way means that these tiny sensor devices have one container on them. And it's been encrypted and locked with keys that can’t be attacked.
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That’s very important, because now if someone did attack, they could also start getting access into the network. So security is even more paramount as you get closer to the edge.

Gardner: Any other forward-looking implications for your alliance? What should we be thinking about in terms of analyzing that data and bringing machine learning (ML) to the edge? Is there something that between your two companies will help facilitate that?

Carlat: The world of containers and agile cloud-native applications is not going away. When I think about the future, enterprises need to pivot. Yet change is hard for all enterprises, and they need help.

They are likely going to turn to trusted partners. HPE and Docker are perfectly aligned, we have been bellwethers in the industry, and we will be there to help on that journey.

Gardner: Yes, this seems like a very long-term relationship.

I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. We have been exploring how Docker and HPE formed an alliance that’s accelerating adoption of modern and agile hybrid architectures. And we have learned how the use of containers has moved from developer infatuation to mainstream hybrid and multi-cloud adoption acceleration.
The world of containers and agile, cloud-native applications is not going away. Enterprises need to pivot. This change is hard, and they need help.

So please join me in thanking our guests, Betty Junod, Senior Director of Product and Partner Marketing at Docker. Thank you, Betty.

Junod: Thank you, Dana.

Gardner: And we have been here with Jeff Carlat, Senior Director of Global Alliances at HPE. Thank you, Jeff.

Carlat: Great to be here, Dana.

Gardner: And thanks as well to our audience for joining this special BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer digital transformation success story.

I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of Hewlett Packard Enterprise-sponsored interviews. Thanks again for listening. Please pass this along to your IT community, and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Transcript of a discussion on how the combination of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Docker provides a cloud ecosystem tag team to help grease the skids for rapid cloud adoption. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2018. All rights reserved.

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