Q&A with Nand Mulchandani of ScaleXtreme

VSM: Can you tell VSM readers about your new product update and the new Dynamic Server Assembly toolset? Is this product available now? If so, how would one go about getting it?

NM: We are introducing Dynamic Server Assembly, a new product update that gives Xpress and Xpert users the ability to quickly create highly-structured servers. With Dynamic Server Assembly, organizations will now be able to model, provision and launch servers with a variety of cloud computing providers.

This new technology is our next step in creating the best user experience for our customers, enabling IT professionals to create specific structures, or templates, and then easily apply them to new machines, across cloud and server systems. It is unlike anything available on the market, allowing customers to create automated and repeatable systems to help scale their cloud deployments. This new functionality is available as of November 15 to customers using Xpress or Xpert without the need for any software updates.

VSM: How has the cloud changed the way IT professionals architect their servers? What changes do you see in the future, as people begin working with multiple clouds?

NM: Servers used to be something that you could set up as you went along, designing them to conform to the exact specifications of whatever application was running on them. It was like building a custom car, each time you wanted to drive to the grocery store.

Virtualization and the cloud have forced people to fundamentally rethink the way they create servers. Machines have to be built with scale in mind from the outset and have to be flexible enough to run on internal machines or a variety of cloud computing environments. So that custom car that was designed just to go to the grocery store and back, now it has to be able to travel 1,000 miles on a tank of gas and go to multiple destinations across all terrains.

It’s not easy to do this. But the power of the cloud has enticed people to start with a radically different design concept. Our product helps them make those robust, versatile designs a reality. Modeling machines with Dynamic Server Assembly gives them the ability to quickly scale their servers and run them across multiple cloud providers. It’s a powerful and important shift in the way people think about their servers.

VSM: How does ScaleXtreme differentiate itself from competitors when it comes to ingenuity and cost-effectiveness?

NM: Systems management solutions should be easy to use. We designed ScaleXtreme to provide all the key systems management features that most people need most often, in a consistent, familiar, web-based interface. That makes it easy to get started with a strong set of server management tools. Because we offer just the tools IT managers are most likely to use, we can offer Xpress for free and Xpert at competitive rates.

We designed our product to be easy to improve and update so we could continue to deliver ingenious new features. Because we’re delivering our products as a service, through the cloud, it’s simple for us to give our users more new features and functions. We flip a switch here and our newest technology is available to all of our users all at once.