BlueXP is now NetApp Console
Monitor and run hybrid cloud data services
Troy Brick Margelofsky, Team lead for our NetApp practice at CDW. If I need to talk to somebody to help a customer on a Saturday, I know I can pick up the phone and somebody is going to answer the phone because we all want to do what's best for our customer. CDW is one of the largest Cisco partners and one of the largest NetApp partners, which also makes us, because of our dedication, the FlexPod, probably the largest FlexPod partner since the beginning of FlexPod in 2010. so CDW customers tend to face a lot of the same challenges that they've been facing almost, I would say, in a way, generations within it. But clearly over the last 10 to 15 years, some of the same recurring themes come up. Efficiency around solutions What do they get in return on their investment that makes sure that they have a long, sustainable infrastructure that works through different phases of their application lifecycle pretty cool thing about FlexPod is it's more it's become more of a framework than it is an actual product. Yes, there's products there, but the framework allows products to be replaced and upgraded and changed out for different reasons based on customer requirements, performance capacity lately with sustainability and how can we get more out of our data centers from power cooling and really just carbon footprint. The components that can be fed back into FlexPod with older components removed is one of the key reasons that it continues to live and be improved and innovative throughout the years. The Cisco NetApp partnership is very strong especially with the relationship for CDW because we are such a large partner with both organizations. So if you put the three of them together and FlexPod, truly the old tagline was built by partners and built in the channel, we can bring our expertise to help solve customer issues, understand that customer, listen to them, figure out what their pain points are, and recommend validated designs out of the FlexPod portfolio that bring the strengths of Cisco and NetApp to bear for that customer following day zero Day one. The really great part about it is that's the strength of both organizations and is the support. So it's even though it's two companies coming together with individual contributions around compute, network and storage, it is a combined support team. So the customer feels supported with the solution. It's just it's the best solution for our customers today. So again, FlexPod pretty much every use case and every workfload that a customer might need there are validated designs that are supported within the FlexPod ecosystem. Some of our primaries that our customers really adapt and utilize and continue to refresh with new components are around the VMware stack. It's tried and true. It's proven. It's been working well for 13 years. Citrix adding Citrix into that for VDI environments. But we also have a pretty large customer base in health care. the support ability of Epic and some of the other health care solutions, it's sort of a go to for,our largest health care customers and AI/ML is starting to be proficient as the consumer buzz around AI is out there. We're starting to see more interest in that from our customers and they're asking substantially more questions. it's a great solution where the customer can have almost similar infrastructure for different workloads and their IT staff and their administrators don't have to pick and choose and learn new technology to solve the same underlying technology for their different workstreams that they need We went from three tier architectures. We went to converged, hyper converged, public cloud, all of them with a promise of more efficiency, speed to market for business applications, and most of those requirements are met. But there's always a hole someplace. And what we've, I think discovered is that instead of one extreme move from where you are today to the next shiny object, it's really moderation. There are places and reasons to have data in multiple locations. When we can move data into the public clouds, we're very close to some of the services that are easily consumed. But there are also reasons have data back on prem. And what's really great about flex pod and what the NetApp ecosystem in the NetApp portfolio is, the term data fabric really is functional. It's there, it's proven, and our customers have the ability to move data from on prem to one cloud to multiple clouds. Back build D.R plans have a secure ransomware protected wrapper that goes around this entire environment. what it does is it gives us the ability to realize thetrue nature of the data fabric concept that I think started in 2014 or 15. It's there, it's real, it works, and it allows our customers to operate with one set of tools. They can place their data where they need to and be most efficient for their business.
The valuable partnership built between Cisco and NetApp helps CDW solve complex customer issues and provide superior support.