VMware's super-secret MARVIN: It's software-defined war on future IT

If you're just flogging servers or arrays, bail out now

Make no mistake: this is the game that is being played today. If all you shift is servers, you're dead. If all you shift is storage arrays, you're dead. Server SANs – like VMware's VSAN, Maxta, Nutanix, SimpliVity and so forth – are absolutely going to be part of the solution, but they are not on their own enough to win the war.

Cloud computing in all its various forms has introduced us to a world where you don't have to handhold your infrastructure. Arguments about OpEx are swaying multi-billion dollar enterprises away from owning their own gear and into Amazon's black hole of lock-in doom.

You don't counter that kind of convenience and simplicity with Yet Another SAN. Amazon, Microsoft, Google et al are a threat to every tin shifter and packaged software vendor on the planet. Do you really think VMware is going to eventually give up on hypervisors, make Yet Another Mobile App and hand Microsoft its 30 per cent on a silver platter?

Not gonna happen.

So vendors like VMware – and Supermicro, Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc – all have to adapt. They need to be able to provide infrastructure that is as easy to use as the public cloud, but offers all the benefits of ownership.

That means a truly converged infrastructure play. No pissing around with System Center Designed For People Who Keep Their Pee In Jars Sanity Decompilation Manager. No screaming obscenities at ESXi because it doesn't quite work with your IPMI controller or the hardware sensors in your server. No laborious setting up of monitoring or backups or puzzling over API integration of something or other.

Cloud in a box. Open box, plug in the cluster, turn on, and receive "cloud".

An out-of-box experience complete with all the trimmings, that doesn't cost $RAND*2. If I've money to bet, that's what MARVIN is to be. By this time next year it won't be the only one. The software defined infrastructure wars are only just beginning. ®