Lenovo drives deeper into $87 billion data center market

Lenovo has intensified its focus on the $87 billion data center technology market by unveiling an expanded array of IT solutions, including next-generation software defined storage, enterprise networking offerings and capabilities, the latest high-performance servers and an enhanced suite of hyper converged appliances.

According to Lenovo, the broader portfolio drives it deeper into next-generation IT and will 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.

“This dramatically expanded portfolio is a powerful demonstration of Lenovo’s commitment to creating purposeful data center innovation in a truly open ecosystem,” said Tom Shell, senior vice president, Data Center Product Group, Lenovo.

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.

“The Lenovo Storage DX8200C is a disruptive product to address explosive data growth,” said Michael Tso, CEO and co-founder of Cloudian.

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 organisations.
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.

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 company stated.

In a statement released, Lenovo said it has also refreshed its x3850 and x3950 X6 servers with new versions incorporating the latest Intel Xeon E7-4800 and E7-8800 v4 processors, which deliver up to 39 percent faster performance than the previous generation. With memory support up to 12TB, these powerful offerings are designed for mission-critical environments, such as in-memory applications like SAP HANA or Hadoop, as well as large virtualisation projects, big data and analytics workloads.