Redington Value to bolster Hyper-Converged Infrastructure in MEA through key partnerships

Redington Value, a distribution division of Redington Gulf, today announced the region-wide roll-out of various Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Appliances (HCIA) through key partnerships with industry leaders such as EMC. The announcement was made on the third day (October 20) of the Gitex Technology Week 2015 being held at the Dubai World Trade Centre. 

One of the solutions, EMC’s VSPEX BLUE is a software-defined data centre appliance that can take on the challenges of an industry that is fast moving towards scalability and resilience. The announcement comes just weeks after the company rolled out the product in Saudi Arabia. 

HCIA has emerged as one of the top priorities for most IT departments as large enterprises as well as small and medium-sized companies are fast adopting the new technology that offers significant advantages in terms of flexibility, scalability, system performance and cost. According to a recent IDC report, hyper-converged systems market grew by 162 per cent in 2014 and is expected to further grow by more than 100 per cent in 2015 to generate $807 million in global revenue. The report also forecasts that HCIA market is expected to increase further by about 60 per cent annually until 2019.

Unlike traditional IT infrastructure that required separate set-up and management of networking, storage and systems administration, converged infrastructure has taken the system to a new level where virtualised servers converge with shared and centrally managed storage. With Hyper Convergence comes a new advanced software-defined system where 

compute, server, storage and management work in co-ordination and set-up into a single appliance designed to address the unique needs of mid-market and enterprise customers.

HCIA is an ideal solution for private/hybrid cloud and application developers and managers, and provides linear scaling capability that grows based on the business needs. Its features exemplify simplicity with fully orchestrated installation, management, patching and upgrading and offers an ideal platform for infrastructure consolidations, virtual desktops in large remote or branch offices and managed service providers.

VSPEX BLUE is designed to specifically facilitate an easy-to-use and scalable system; the next-generation converged infrastructure is built on x86 servers and enables customers to go from power on to provisioning virtual machines in under 15 minutes.

Also featured is a one-stop Application Centre or a Market where users can download value-added software from within the appliance. 

“The market is fast evolving and the emergence of hyper-converged infrastructure has created fundamental shifts in the IT sector. The new hyper-convergence system addresses some of the key challenges within the data centre infrastructure and offers exactly what the industry was waiting for,” says Ramkumar ‎Balakrishnan, President, Value Distribution at Redington Gulf.

For Redington Value, the product offers an excellent opportunity to cater to a market that is known for faster adoption of latest innovations. The Value division of Redington Gulf has been in the process of redefining itself as a solutions partner in an effort to cater to an industry that is fast changing into a marketplace for all-in-one solutions and an IT segment that is challenged by disruptive technology. Apart from EMC, Redington has also tied up with various leading providers of HCIA and will be rolling out its products into the MEA (Middle East and Africa) market in a phased manner. 

“At Redington Value, we are also focused on building a ‘converged infrastructure’ speciality in value division. The roll-out of HCIA offers us an excellent platform to position ourselves as a solutions partner. The expertise we have gained over the years, working with various brands and the skillset available today, can be best utilised to market the latest technology, thereby enabling companies within the region to leverage the available technological advancement. We have been working with our partners to bring the various available solutions to the region and we expect a massive growth and adoption of the new technology,” says Balakrishnan.

The company is showcasing some of the latest introductions in the sphere of hyper-converged solutions and software-defined solutions besides its Redington Value Cloud solution during the ongoing Gitex Technology Week 2015, which also coincides with the tenth year of operations for the Value division.

On the first day (October 18) of the Gitex Technology Week 2015, the company announced the RedCloud - a marketplace that offers customers a one-stop solution for all their Enterprise Cloud requirements. Apart from offering a unified portal for cloud solutions such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, it will eventually offer subscriptions from about 30 to 40 SaaS (software as a solution) brands, thereby facilitating clients with a single log-in platform for all products, unified billing and online payments, while offering live chat and agent management among other features.