How To "Vawlt" Superclouds

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it might appear to be the season of autumn approaching winter but, for me, it’s been very much the vaulting, or vawlting season.
Note – this has nothing to do with the old Scottish comedian, Chic Murray joke: “I met this chap at the Olympics. I said to him, “Excuse me but are you a pole vaulter?”, he replied, “No, I’m German, but how did you know my name was Walter?”

Nor has it to do with athletics, other than the travel involved in both of the references here (suffice to say, nothing went according to plan and it really should be an Olympic sport). Anyway, no sooner do I get back from a trip to London to spend time with Commvault (recorded in a recent blog here) than my test report with Vawlt is introduced to the world. You can download it here:

Independent Review: Vawlt’s Supercloud Sets New Standards in Cloud Storage

– read down to the bottom of the page and you’ll find the link to the report download. Essentially, that release tells you all you need to know about a vendor that will be new to most readers, but is attacking one of the most salient (and costly) points in the universe of IT currently; managing, securing and optimising a multi-cloud (public/private) deployment. For me, Vawlt can provide a critical component to my view of minimising the component count required in creating your next-gen IT infrastructure (as I touched up in my last blog about Nile). From an IT team perspective, IT has become VERY complicated. If the aspiration is to make technology as simple to manage as possible, then it’s about trying to recreate the “mainframe concept” – just one source of hardware, data storage, apps and user connectivity/security to worry about. The three requirements are therefore data/app storage, delivery (networking) and security – essentially what a mainframe delivered in its own (and limited) way. So, as a vendor or, more realistically an SI or MSP, the closer you can get to offering a Mainframe as a Service solution (you head it here first guys, from the inventor of CSaaS – or Common Sense as a Service) the better it is for an easy life as a ITOps director.

A CSP only provides the DC element, SASE vendors provide the secure delivery, but not the data storage element, nor the application portfolio management. But the trick is to use as few management interfaces as possible in order to be able to manage the ENTIRE IT real estate. For perspective, bear in mind here that I’ve tested vendor products in the past, even those aimed at the SMB market, that had three separate management interfaces in themselves (c/o being cobbled together “unceremoniously” through different acquisitions).

But while there is no “one stop shop” that gives you the best version of everything you need from a single vendor source to fulfil your entire IT deployment strategy, back on the (non-pole) Vawlt case, it certainly justifies that tag as a “Supercloud deployment” solution and I would highly recommend a read of the test report; it could open a few eyes and a few more IT wallets.

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