Virtualization Field Day 5 in Boston will be Scale Computing’s fifth appearance at a Tech Field Day event dating all the way back to VMworld 2012 when they launched their hyperconvergence solution, HC3. Thinking about this is kind of funny really – picture the Scale Computing booth on the VMworld show floor – at the time they were a scale-out storage company, however they were launching their KVM based hyperconvergence solution which really has nothing to do with VMware at all! One word – ballsy! 
Either way since then Scale has been promoting the HC3 which targets the SMB market, and they have been doing a great job of it as I’ve seen them at nearly every event I’ve been too, big or small.
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Disclaimer: As a Virtualization Field Day 5 delegate all of my flight, travel, accommodations, eats, and drinks are paid for. However I do not receive any compensation nor am I required to write anything in regards to the event or the sponsors. This is done at my own discretion.
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So what is it?
We all know what hyperconvergence is right? It’s just so hot right now! Scale computing, just as the Nutanix’s and Simplivity’s of the world has combined the compute, network, and storage into one box, allowing businesses to gain performance and agility by implementing their building block type architecture. Scale currently ships three different models of their HC3, differing in capacity and memory…
And the uniqueness?
In order to succeed in any market you really need to have something which sets you apart from the “other guys”. Something which makes your offering so compelling that you just have to have it! What’s Scales? I would most definitely say their niche is really knowing their target market, which in turn puts the HC3 at a very compelling price.
Scale has never once deviated from the market they say they serve. They bring a hyperconverged, scale-able platform to the SMB. But price isn’t the only thing that helps them succeed in the SMB space.. They have really evaluated everything from their interface, to ease of use, to the options that they expose within their management software. Basically, Scale provides the SMB with a solution to create and run VMs – no more, no less. When I watched Scale at VFD4 I often found myself asking questions like, “So is this it? You just click create VM and you are done? Where’s all the options?”. The answers I got were “Yes, you are done, there are no other options.” It’s simply just a solution for the SMB admin, who probably has little to no time to mess around with anything or learn anything new – it lets them get in, create a VM, and get out.
Now I’d be selling them a little short if I didn’t say that there were other options – they have the ability to take snapshots, to clone VMs, to setup replication between another Scale cluster. All of these implemented in the same, easy to use, very little setup kind of way as everything else. They also have all the “enterprisey” features as well – things like HA, Live Migration, Thin Provisioning etc – however they are all enabled by default and require no setup at all.
I’m very excited to see what Scale will be talking about at VFD5. Their presentation was honestly one of my favorites at VFD5 ( and that’s not just the shot of bourbon talking). I’m interested to see if they have stayed true with their “SMB” focus if talking about any future releases – I believe that Scale really knowing their target market plays a big part in the successes that they have been having. If you want to follow along be sure to watch the live stream over at the VFD5 page or I should have it up and running, along with all of my VFD5 related content on this page as well. I can say that their CTO, Jason Collier is a great speaker and it will be an entertaining 2 hours to say the least!
