New product releases are always exciting, but they do come with a level of responsibility. Customers look to distribution partners as experts on all Cisco products, so thoroughly understanding all products is crucial to business. Cade Girod TD SYNNEX Product Business Manager for Cisco Data Center, spoke with other experts about the new UCS X-Series M7 Servers and the challenges X-Series products can help customers overcome in a recent webinar. Joining Girod were Dave Nentarz, Systems Architect Cloud Infrastructure and Software, Cisco; Vik Rachmaninoff, TD SYNNEX Vendor Development Manager, EAs; and Richard Cordon, TD SYNNEX Cisco Data Center CCIE Engineer. The full webinar provides an in-depth discussion plus information about changes to specializations and VIP 41. Keep reading for a recap of some key points.
Persistent Challenges for IT
In terms of on-premises IT, customers continue to face many of the same challenges. It’s important for partners to understand these challenges to provide the solutions to address them. Nentarz shared three of the main struggles during the webinar, and all of them involved silos. The first challenge, architectural silos spawning islands of infrastructure and operations, leads to reduced visibility and increased cost and risk. Additionally, the diversity of applications is driving infrastructure diversity and, in turn, more silos. All of this contributes to the third challenge: fragmented technologies impeding time to value.
UCS X-Series: What’s New?
The goal for Cisco was to create a product that could be used by customers across all of those applications and silos. Announced in January, available to order in February, and now shipping from Cisco are the newly released UCS X Series M7 Servers based on fourth-generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors. The two-socket modular server offers flexibility for all customers’ workloads.
The four-socket server, which Nentarz said will be shipping in either May or June, is designed for scale-up applications. As Intel didn’t offer a four-socket capable CPU with the M6 generation, four-socket applications on M5 four-socket servers are up for a refresh. Nentarz pointed out that there are a lot of databases and high-powered, mission-critical applications that are due for a refresh from that M5 family, and the M7 and its capabilities can present a great upgrade opportunity. Considering how long it takes to plan a refresh around mission-critical applications, partners should start having those conversations now.
How Customers Take Advantage of the UCS X-Series
According to Nentarz, customers are increasingly relying on UCS X-Series products for a variety of uses. The use cases encompass nearly every industry that relies on IT. This includes everything from a regional telco adopting X-Series modular system to future-proof the environment to an entertainment and e-commerce giant supporting its customers with X-Series for AI/ML and video streaming apps. Another example is a top 20 healthcare system embracing X-Series to run Epic, SQL, VDI, and other enterprise apps flawlessly. Epic operates MyChart and Sequel in the same form factor, as well as VDI. The UCS X-Series prevents application or architectural silos, allowing for seamless operation of all apps like the three run by Epic.
Conclusion
The Cisco UCS X-Series M7 was designed to address many of the same challenges that customers encounter again and again. To best meet customer needs, it’s important for partners to understand the challenges they face and the solutions available. Watch the webinar to learn more about the new UCS X-Series servers here.