Delphix: Modernization Engine to Help with Data Center Updates

Delphix is launching a new product to help IT administrators relieve a few of the headaches associated with updating data centers — waiting for the updates to finish and losing everything if something goes wrong. 

Dubbed Delphix Modernization Engine, the new product creates, manages and archives virtual copies of applications, databases and files, the company said.

Delphix Strategy Vice President Rick Caccia told Talkin' Cloud that customers may not realize that "there is a surprisingly and not-always-obvious large amount of delay in waiting for data."

"In practice, across nearly every customer, half of the project's schedule is burned up waiting for data," he said. "We eliminate that wait and therefore accelerate the project schedule."

To preserve data for regulatory compliance and legal matters, the product can virtualize a database, maintain a copy of it and store all of its versions over time.

"So, a customer can use Delphix to make a virtual copy of an entire application and its databases, move it to a new data center and stand it up, turn off the old physical source version, but still retain the ability to recreate the old version if needed, for legal or regulatory purposes," Caccia said

He said the company calls this a Live Archive, and "we haven't seen anything else quite like it."

The product is not limited to only virtualizing databases. It can also virtualize an application instance or a file system.

In addition, the solution assists administrators with migrating applications and databases to x86-based Linux servers. Delphix said its platform can reduce the conversion process by 80 percent through its automatic and efficient data transformation technology.

As the industry moves forward, the company expects data center updates to increase, and these efforts are "as large as the move to the Web was in the mid 90s," Caccia said.

"The large areas of effort are: migrate from legacy Unix servers to commodity x86 Linux VMs, consolidate data centers, hybrid clouds, and retirement of old apps on expensive maintenance," he said. "We expect that, within a couple of years, the average data center will look dramatically different."

With regards to Delphix's channel partners, the company is expanding its VAR channel globally and has increased growth in APAC and EMEA, Caccia said. He added that the company is also "aggressively expanding our SI channel, putting in new deals with large and smaller SIs."

Follow CJ Arlotta on Twitter @cjarlotta for further updates on the story above.