Lenovo has intensified its focus on the $87 billion data center technology market by unveiling an expanded arsenal of IT solutions, including next-gen software defined storage, enterprise networking offerings and capabilities, the latest high-performance servers and an enhanced suite of hyperconverged appliances. The broader portfolio drives Lenovo deeper into next-generation IT and strengthens the company’s ability to help customers transform their data centers by embracing emerging data consumption and delivery models such as cloud-based infrastructure, big data and analytics solutions. The company will showcase many of these new solutions publicly for the first time at its annual Lenovo TechWorld event in San Francisco on June 9.
The new offerings are the latest demonstration of Lenovo’s ability to leverage partnerships with industry leaders, as well as leading-edge startup firms, to orchestrate delivery of best-of-breed solutions free of legacy technologies and investment burdens. They give customers even greater flexibility to deploy the right solutions for their evolving IT environments and business scenarios without being locked in to rigid technology stacks.
Lenovo launched a new and innovative Software Defined Storage (SDS) appliance program, called StorSelect, collaborating with leading Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to integrate their SDS software with Lenovo hardware in turnkey appliances. The factory-integrated appliances with end-to-end Lenovo support enable simple and confident deployment of scalable storage solutions. The first offerings in this program – the Lenovo Storage DX8200N and DX8200C– integrate SDS software from Nexenta Systems, Inc. and Cloudian, Inc., respectively, to deliver breakthrough return on investment for storage solutions.
The DX8200N supports unified file and block storage for scale-up deployments leveraging three different technologies – all-flash, hybrid, and all spinning drives. The DX8200C is an object-based storage appliance that is ideal for large scale-out deployments and addresses the fastest growing segment of the storage market. Both offerings are built upon Lenovo’s industry leading x86 server platforms and will begin shipping worldwide in the third quarter of 2016.
In addition to the StorSelect solutions, the company also unveiled its first Lenovo-branded mid-range storage systems – new V-Series family of 12Gb SANs. The V3700 V2 and V5030 are flexible hybrid and all-flash SAN solutions that help clients confidently and affordably scale their IT operations to improve storage economics in their organizations. The Lenovo V Series family will begin shipping worldwide in June 2016.
Lenovo rejuvenated its enterprise networking line with expanded offerings and capabilities, enabling customers to deploy more comprehensive solutions from the core data center to the campus. The company released its next-generation network operating system, Lenovo Cloud NOS, which offers new functionality that enhances resiliency, cloud-level scalability and programmability. It will be available for customer download starting on June 17.
In addition, Lenovo disclosed new details of its global strategic partnership with Juniper Networks, which was announced earlier this year. The two companies signed a reseller agreement under which Lenovo will offer Juniper Networks’ EX2300 and EX4550 Ethernet Switches, as well as the QFX10002-72Q data center spine aggregation switch. Lenovo will sell these Juniper offerings directly as part of an integrated portfolio that also includes Lenovo’s own data center access products. The Juniper offerings will be available from Lenovo beginning in the third quarter of 2016.
The companies also jointly published a new virtualized data center reference architecture, available now, that will allow customers to easily build solutions integrating their respective technologies to address virtually all data center networking needs.
