EMC overnight launched its new hyper-converged appliance VSPEX Blue, with confirmation that Avnet would be the sole distributor upon release in Australia.
VPSEX Blue is based on VMware's EVO:Rail appliance, but with extra management capabilities and a technology market added into the software layer by EMC.
The vendor boasted that the appliance can go from boot up to provisioning virtual machines in just 15 minutes.
Although internationally five distributors are involved for the channel-only release, EMC's ANZ director of business partner sales, Chris Trevitt, told CRN that in Australia, Avnet would be the only distributor upon launch. Trevitt did leave the door open for other distributors beyond that point.
He said that a "killer" selling point for VSPEX Blue is that EMC can cover all the support.
"What we provide with VSPEX Blue is a single support organisation across all components," he said. "If you have a challenge with the VMware component, hardware component, or if you need assistance with embedded EMC software they can call one organisation."
The features added by EMC on top of EVO:Rail include VSPEX Blue Manager, which provides support information and manages patching; VPSEX Blue Market, which allows customers to shop for services and technologies from EMC and its partners; and EMC Secure Remote Support, which gives the vendor monitoring capabilities on the machine.
VSPEX Blue will be available on 17 February in Australia.
The launch of the box comes after last week's surprise merger of VCE and VSPEX businesses to form a US$1 billion-plus converged infrastructure business within EMC.
"We are excited bringing the EMC VSPEX BLUE appliance to market solely through [the] channel, where we can leverage our distributors' global reach and scale to take this highly differentiated product to market," said Gregg Ambulos, EMC's senior vice president for global sales.
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