A Winning Partnership – Pure Storage and Catalogic ECX

The team here at Catalogic Software we won’t settle for second place, winning is part of our DNA.

However winning is something that isn’t done by simply putting the fastest engine on the grid or fastest storage device in your datacentre. You need to ensure you have the complete package. In Formula One there are 3 core components to a championship winning car:

1. The Engine

2. The Aerodynamics &

3. Reliability 

All 3 of these areas are critical to the success or failure of a team. You could have the fastest engine in the world but with poor aerodynamics or reliability you will never win a race or championship. Something the Arrows A22 driven via Jos Verstappen pictured below definitely never managed! 

The third aero wing was quickly banned by the FIA after Arrows attempting to use in practice around Monaco.

If you look deeper into the history of F1 you will find a whole host of banned aerodynamic developments as the designers always try to bend the boundaries and rules to deliver a competitive advantage and ultimately reduce lap times. 

In the current day and age aerodynamics are arguably the most important factor in Formula One car performance. It has become the key to performance gain due to the often very marginal gains that can currently be made by engine changes or other mechanic component development.

Switching lanes back into the datacentre in here you again have 3 core components for a winning storage setup:

1. The Storage a.k.a the Engine

2. The Management, Orchestration and Automation a.k.a the Aerodynamics

3. Reliability

Here the management, orchestration and automation a.k.a the aerodynamics are in my opinion the most important factor in having a winning storage setup. 

This is because most storage vendors can deliver the speeds, feeds and data functions needed to run data as quickly as possible. However, lightening fast storage doesn’t mean optimal performance and utilisation. The management, orchestration and automation tools are what enable IT teams to deliver optimal data performance and utilisation.

This is the exact reason all Pure Storage customers need Catalogic ECX to enable a winning storage setup. Pure storage is a leader in the Gartner magic quadrant, and therefore undoubtedly have the engine capabilities. With Catalogic ECX you can enable optimal utilisation of Pure Storage environments. We deliver an efficient architecture to enable effective management, orchestration and automation within the Storage environment. Some of the key game changing benefits we deliver are:

Destination Unknown

2021 is going to be a key year for many businesses attempting to recover from the tremendous impact COVID-19, political shifts and more had last year.
I don’t think many of us will look back on 2020 fondly and hopefully humanity can rise up and work together to get us back to normality.... or even better than before.

One of the key realisations of 2020 was that businesses that quickly shift to accommodate unexpected changes can continue to operate and even excel despite the unexpected and often challenging circumstances.

A lot of organisations had previously feared a negative productivity impact if most, or all of their employees worked from home, and had therefore never tried it. However, for most organisations this shift proved to be a success, with employees not spending unnecessary time, money and energy travelling. This has often resulted in employees having more time to focus in the comfort of their own home and for many a better work/life balance.
I still do miss a trip out at the moment though just for the comradery, face-to-face interaction and knowledge sharing.

Looking back on 2020, we had a very successful year here at Catalogic. One of the key reasons for this success is that we have the ability to quickly pivot and work in an agile manner, meaning we discuss customers’ requirements and develop solutions to deliver against them – solutions which are often specific and complex.

A key talking point many customers came to us with in 2020 was around how we can improve data visibility, management and orchestration.

Sound interesting? Let me talk to you about how we can enable you to have visibility in your environment via Catalogic ECX.

In every active environment data continues to grow. Data growth often causes a major data headache for IT administrators. The reason for this is growth results in more and more information and often it gets to a point where understanding what data sits where is a nearly impossible task.

Step forward Catalogic ECX.

With Catalogic ECX we can provide data visibility, management control and orchestration of NetApp, IBM Storage, Pure Storage, HPE Nimble, VMware vSphere, Microsoft SQL, Oracle, SAP HANA and InterSystems Caché environments.

Because we inventorise all key data within these types of storage, hypervisors, virtual machines, physical servers and databases we can provide the ability for IT administrators to better navigate their environment. Think of it like a Sat-Nav that tells us where we would like to go (ECX tells us what resources you want to see to show the associated applications, servers and storage)

*Yes that is my sat nav!!