EMC World 2014: "In two years, software-defined data centres will be the norm" says Cancer Research UK

Head of infrastructure Mick Briggs reflects on EMC's part in a changing industry attitudes

"Software-defined data centres, that's the next big thing," states Cancer Research UK's head of infrastructure, Mick Briggs.

"The more people that adopt the principles of that, the more it'll become the norm," he tells Computing, speaking at the EMC World 2014 conference in Las Vegas this week.

"People just need to do it. I think in the next two to three years, that will happen. You need to think about it a little bit more rather than just listening to the same old people telling you the same old thing."

Briggs says that he will now "literally throw people out of the office" if they approach him trying to sell him a hybrid cloud that is in reality "just a managed service".

"I'm done with that," he says. "I'm looking forward to some stability. That's what we need now. Stability."

As a long-term customer of EMC and its subsidiary companies, using VMware to virtualise around 600 machines since 2007, Briggs is delighted that EMC has now decided to fling open those closet doors and start being a little more honest about just how many companies it owns.

"VMware and EMC has always been much of a muchness for us, but I'm glad they finally admitted the Federation, because it's been almost awkward talking about VMware and EMC in the same sentence, especially to some of the EMC guys. It's no great secret just how much of VMware is owned by EMC," he says.

"I do understand that - obviously - VMware does business with lots of storage companies and not just EMC, so it's always going to be a difficult one."

But, reasons Briggs, even longtime customers such as himself are already waking up to EMC products they hadn't always considered now that a concerted effort is being made to portray them as part of an ecosystem.

"We use RSA, we use VMware, we use EMC, but don't use Pivotal as yet," he says.

"But the concepts [of a cloud operating system] - we're already there and ready. So I guess we'll start looking into what that does too. I'm not going to rule anything out, to be honest."

Briggs is pleased that access to all of EMC's products will follow the same kind of financial model as its hybrid cloud service.

"We hooked into the hybrid cloud, and realised there now is such a service we can actually make use of. So that then changes our thinking of the data centres again. I carry a small overhead in terms of computing storage - so it's the thought of being able to spin up in someone else's data centre, and it works, and then pull it back, and it works, and not get hooked into long-term contracts.

"If you'd asked me two years ago where we were going, and what I think now, I'd say it's evolved. It's evolving. It's all down to that hybrid cloud concept."

Briggs states that the concept of hybrid cloud could prove more impactful to the industry than its reality, forcing a change on every provider in a very short space of time.

"The impact of the concept is awesome, because it's liberating. And it's showing the old managed service providers that you can't do that anymore - we're not going to buy into a three-year contract. No way."

Briggs also explains how it's changed the way he approaches his in-house computing, too. Now that he's buying into cloud services, he can buy in more hardware again, because he can use it how he likes, when he likes. And he can do this by using Cancer Research's capital budget.

"I know if you'd asked me a couple of years ago, I wouldn't think I'd be buying so much tin. But now, why not? If you're buying the right amount of tin and there's no waste or overhead - because you can always just plug in to use short-term compute from somewhere else.

EMC World 2014: "In two years, software-defined data centres will be the norm" says Cancer Research UK

Head of infrastructure Mick Briggs reflects on EMC's part in a changing industry attitudes

"What we've been doing internally is all about releasing us from long-term contracts. The powers that be aren't massively concerned that I'm spending capex rather than purchasing a service; they just want to see that nothing's wasted.

"The industry is now started to accept that that's becoming the norm - which is why I say this VMware and vCHS stuff will be more conceptually impacting, because they've literally said, ‘Right, here's the service that everybody's saying that they want'. So that's all I'm going to be buying from hybrid cloud services. I want cheap compute over here, and if you put your prices up, I'll pick it up and put it over there. It puts the control back in the customer's hands again."

Briggs feels the same about what ViPR 2.0 - EMC's newly-upgraded software-defined storage product - could mean for industry trends.

"ViPR's definitely the next thing on my list," he says, while admitting he's not yet studied the offering in great detail.

"I didn't see the keynote, but I saw the highlights, and I saw [VMware CEO] Pat Gelsinger talk about his stuff as well. The problem with where we are now is - what EMC is telling us now is... how do I put this without it sounding bad? What EMC is telling us now is what the industry's been telling us we should be able to do for some years."

"There's no big impact because people have been saying this is what we should be doing for some time. And with EMC that's now here. It's like vCHS [VMware vCloud Hybrid Service]. I can see what I can use it for, and the potential is huge. So for someone who's been sitting there trying to figure out how to do hybrid cloud for some time, vCHS comes along and bang - there's now actually hybrid cloud. We'd all been looking at it as something that would never work. Now it does, you have to just reset your mind. You have to ask why you were excited in the first place, and go from there."

Briggs says that with EMC, "there's always something else going on they're not telling us about". For the life of him, though, he can't work out what the company is going to cook up next.

"I think given the amount of innovation that's come in over the past couple of years, I'm expecting a lull. Because the question is what else could we want? I feel like a kid at the moment," he laughs.

"I've got VPlex [EMC's virtualisation and private cloud offering], and VMware's bang up to date. I guess automation might be next, though. Everybody's talking about it right now, but there's a million ways of doing it, and none of it's compatible with anything else.

"So you've got to be a little bit careful how you do it. We treat our web-based and corporate-based stuff differently. The web-based stuff is all hosted, a managed service, and we control the implementation of it. I can see if the automation piece sorts itself out, we'll combine those two into one way of thinking."