IP Expo: Scale Computing Introduces HC3 “Data Centre In A Box”

Scale Computing has launched its HC3 “data centre in a box” in the UK, at the IP Expo show in London.

Built specifically for midsize companies, HC3 includes servers, storage and virtualisation, simplifying access to the infrastructure needed to keep applications running. According to Scale, the unified solution costs 40-50 percent less than shopping for components separately. It was already released in the US in August.

For that IT guy

Scale Computing is a US company founded in 2007. It began with scale-out storage, but quickly evolved to offer virtualisation. From the start, Scale focused on developing products for SMBs – companies with less than 500 employees.

According to the worldwide field operations manager Patrick Conte, the UK is the second most important market for the company after the US. Scale is expanding rapidly on the island, selling products to the City of London and local governments, schools, banks and factories.

“Support for mid-market IT is in the DNA of our company. Jason [Collier] and other co-founders have all been responsible for IT in a small company at some point, and they know that the problems of the mid-market IT guy are just as pervasive as the problems of the corporate IT. Except he doesn’t have the resources to deal with the issues, nor does he have anyone to ask for help. He is on his own,” Conte told TechWeekEurope.

“Besides, the investment community doesn’t put money into mid-market, they invest in large enterprise and social media. So there’s a big gap in innovation. We looked at the market and decided that we can build the solutions specifically for that IT guy, because we know what his needs are,” he added.

In addition, IT spend growth for SMBs is currently much higher than in the enterprise market, and the competition is not as fierce. “EMC takes no prisoners,” jokes Scale CTO Jason Collier.

As a fully integrated appliance, HC3 eliminates the need to separately purchase virtualisation software, external servers, and storage – resulting in significant reductions in both costs and complexity. As a scale-out solution, additional compute or storage resources can be added to a cluster within minutes, with applications and data failing over between nodes in the event of equipment failure.

With no virtualisation software to license and no external storage to buy, Scale claims HC3 makes the deployment and management of a highly available and scalable infrastructure “as easy to manage as a single server”.

A complete three-node HC3 cluster capable of 15-30 virtual workloads starts at under £19,449 and includes all necessary servers, storage and virtualisation, along with 24 hour support.

Earlier this year, Scale Computing had partnered with data protection and disaster recovery specialist Veeam Software, in order to provide virtual disaster recovery solutions for SMBs.

“Here’s a good analogy: if you want a car, you can go out and buy some wheels and transmission and engine, get a book and put it together yourself. Or you could buy a Mini Cooper. We are selling Mini Coopers.”

“We want the mid-size IT staff to stop being the mechanic and have them focus on driving the car. Focus on the applications that make the business its money, and let us take care of the infrastructure,” said Conte.

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