Page 7 - Federal Computer Week, January/February 2019

Working Together, Delivering Solutions
Reputation in government is generally a good thing, but when it comes to such things as the CDW·G/Nutanix partnership, it can sometimes be a challenge.
CDW·G is well-known to government agencies
as a provider of products and product-based solutions. But it’s not so well known as a company that partners with multiple IT providers to
build comprehensive solutions needed to meet agencies’ IT missions.
“We get that a lot,” says William Frank, CDW·G field solution architect. “Most customers see us being a product provider, and when they ask us about such things as HCI, cloud solutions, data migration, services and contracting, they don’t realize we have that and more, and have had for some time.”
“As CDW·G continues to add leading edge technology partnerships, such as the one with Nutanix, more federal customers will realize what CDW·G can offer,” Frank says.
willing to listen when we presented some working examples of other agencies that were using Nutanix HCI.”
Although HCI is
a relatively simple concept, achieving a smooth implementation requires managing certain complexities, Frank says. To illustrate that concept, he referenced a project involving an agency that opted for an
HCI solution from a different OEM. The solution was undersized and didn’t meet required specifications. Ultimately, multiple rounds of adding nodes and capacity by the OEM couldn’t rescue what became a failed HCI implementation.
CDW·G positioned
Nutanix to replace
the unsuccessful HCI project. The successful installation and knowledge transfer of the Nutanix solution occurred well within the agency’s projected implementation schedule, Frank says.
The kind of digital transformation that’s catching hold in government is also driving major changes in many industries. According to Gartner’s “2019 CIO Agenda,” companies’ experimentations with digital technologies is moving into a new phase of full-scale implementation.
One-third of the organizations surveyed by Gartner said they anticipate scaling or refining their digital
initiatives, compared to just 17 percent in last year’s survey. Only 4 percent
said they had no digital initiative at all, “which signals a shift from digital as an option to digital as
a mainstream platform,” Gartner said.
In government, market watcher IDC projects
that HCI will continue to evolve into an increasingly important option for agencies, enabling data center consolidations, virtualization, Big Data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning. In addition, IDC believes HCI brings more predictable economics
to agency IT operations, since capacity can be more exactly scaled to demand.
Economics also plays a big role in the CDW·G/ Nutanix partnership, Montha pointed out, as
agencies switch to an ongoing, operational expenditure (OPEX) way of funding operations — driven by adoption of a more cloud-heavy, services strategy — and away from a one-time capital expenditure (CAPEX) model.
“Companies such as Nutanix sell more into the CAPEX business,” he says, “but as agencies change to this OPEX way of doing business, partnerships with companies such as CDW·G that can work in both modes become more of a necessity.”
To Learn More:
CDWG.com/Nutanix