Scale Computing – A Year in Review 2016

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It’s that time of the year again. December is winding to a close and the new year is almost here. Let me first say that we here at Scale Computing hope 2016 was a positive year for you and we want to wish you a wonderful 2017. Now, though, I’d like to reflect back on 2016 and why it has been such an outstanding year for Scale Computing.

“And the award goes to…”

Scale Computing was recognized a number of times this year for technology innovation and great products and solutions, particularly in the midmarket. We won awards at both the Midsize Enterprise Summit and the Midmarket CIO Forum, including Best in Show and Best Midmarket Strategy. Most recently, Scale Computing was honored with an Editor’s Choice Award by Virtualization Review as one of the most-liked products of the year. You can read more about our many awards in 2016 in this press release.

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Scenes from the 2016 Midsize Enterprise Summit

News Flash!

2016 was the year Scale Computing finally introduced flash storage into our hyperconverged appliances. Flash storage has been around for awhile now but the big news was in how we integrated it into the virtualization infrastructure. We didn’t use any clunky VSA models with resource-hogging virtual appliances. We didn’t implement it as a cache to make up for inefficient storage architecture. We implemented flash storage as a full storage tier embedded directly into the hypervisor. We eliminated all the unnecessary storage protocols that slow down other flash implementations. In short, we did it the right way. Oh, and we delivered it with our own intelligent automated tiering engine called HEAT. You can read more about it here in case you missed it.

Newer, Stronger, Faster

When we introduced the new flash storage in the HC3, we introduced three new HC3 appliance models, the HC1150, HC2150, and HC4150–significantly increasing speed and capacity in the HC3. We also introduced the new HC1100 appliance to replace the older HC1000 model, resulting in a resource capacity increase of nearly double over the HC1000. Finally, we recently announced the preview of our new HC1150D that doubles the compute over the HC1150 and introduces a higher capacity with support of 8TB drives. We know your resource and capacity needs grow overtime and we’ll keep improving the HC3 to stay ahead of the game. Look for more exciting announcements along these lines in 2017.

Going Solo

In 2016, hyperconvergence with Scale Computing HC3 was opened up to all sorts of new possibilities including the new Single Node Appliance Configuration. Where before you needed at least three nodes in an HC3 cluster, now you can go with the SNAC-size HC3. (Yes, I am in marketing and I make up this corny stuff). The Single Node allows extremely cost effective configurations that include distributed enterprise (small remote/branch offices), backup/disaster recovery, or just the small “s” businesses in the SMB. Read more about the possibilities here.

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Cloud-based DR? Check

2016 was also the year Scale Computing rolled out a cloud-based disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) offering called ScaleCare Remote Recovery Service. This is an exclusive DR solution for HC3 customers that want to protect their HC3 workloads in a secure, hosted facility for backup and disaster recovery. With per-monthly billing, this service is perfect for organizations that can’t or don’t want to host DR in their own facilities and who value the added services like assisted recovery and DR testing. Read more about this DRaaS solution here.

Better Together

2016 has been an amazing year for technology partnerships at Scale Computing. You may have seen some of the various announcements we’ve made the past year. These include Workspot whom we’ve partnered with for an amazingly simple VDI solution, Information Builders whom we partnered with for a business intelligence and analytics appliance, Brocade who we’ve most recently joined in the Brocade Strategic Collaboration Program to expand the reach of hyperconvergence and HC3, and more. We even achieved Citrix Ready certification this year. Keep an eye out for more announcements to come as we identify more great solutions to offer you.

The Doctor is In

It wouldn’t be much of a new year celebration without a little tooting of my own horn, so I thought I’d mention that 2016 was the year I personally joined Scale Computing, along with many other new faces. Scale Computing has been growing this year. I haven’t properly introduced myself in a blog yet so here it goes. My name is David Paquette, Product Marketing Manager at Scale Computing, and they call me Doctor P around here (or Dr. P for short). It has been a fantastic year for me having joined such a great organization in Scale Computing and I am looking forward to an amazing 2017. Keep checking our blog for my latest posts.

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Just me, Dr. P

Sincerely, from all of us at Scale Computing, thank you so much for all of the support over the past year. We look forward to another big year of announcements and releases to come. Of course, these were just some of the 2016 highlights, so feel free to look back through the various blog posts and press releases for all of the 2016 news.

Happy New Year!