Datalink Becoming FlexPod Premium Partner

Datalink Corp., a provider of
data center infrastructure and services, announced that it has been designated
a FlexPod Premium Partner by Cisco Systems, Inc.
and NetApp, Inc. to provide solutions and
services supporting the FlexPod data center solution.

Datalink is the first North American channel partner to earn the new FlexPod
Premium Partner designation and is recognized for its competencies in
helping organizations unify their data centers with the FlexPod solution. It has designed and deployed 28 FlexPod-based architectures and is one of
a few partners that offer a suite of virtual data center consulting,
analysis, design, deployment, support and management services.

FlexPod is a pretested and validated data center architecture that
combines networking, computing and storage in a shared infrastructure to help
organizations achieve greater data center agility and efficiency as well as
accelerate and simplify the transition to the cloud. Components include the
Cisco UCS server, Cisco network switches, and NetApp unified storage systems
running on Data ONTAP software.

"Building converged data
center infrastructures like FlexPod requires cross-discipline capabilities
spanning servers, storage, and networks that most resellers and service
providers lack. The new FlexPod Premium Partner designation reflects Cisco’s
and NetApp’s recognition that businesses need assistance in identifying
partners that are not only qualified to design, deploy and support the
individual infrastructure components, but also skilled in the critical process
of integrating them," said Datalink president and CEO Paul Lidsky.
"We began developing our expertise
on converged infrastructures two years before the FlexPod architecture was
introduced, and that led directly to our ability to meet the stringent
requirements of the program."

Datalink
offers:

• A 160+ engineering staff with more than 1,000 technical
  certifications and cross-functional expertise, including engineers across the
  U.S. with converged data center experience.
• Consulting, assessment and design services to tailor each
  deployment to the customer’s needs.
• A proof-of-concept lab enabling customers to evaluate unified data
  center technologies and their application to the specific customer environment.
• OneCallSM Unified Support for converged data centers, enabling
  customers to contact the Datalink support team for issues with any component of
  the infrastructure from any vendor for faster resolution and one-stop
  accountability.
• Managed monitoring services enabling customers to maximize system
  performance and uptime by outsourcing monitoring and problem detection to
  managed services staff.

Use of the flexible, scalable and pretested FlexPod infrastructure
enables Datalink to lower deployment risk, increase data center efficiencies,
as well as create a flexible IT environment that
scales to meet changing business needs. In addition, Datalink leverages FlexPod
architectures as foundations for private clouds. Datalink’s recent FlexPod
installations include deployments at Cook County Health and Hospitals System,
consisting of nearly two dozen facilities across the Chicagoland area and
Hughes Network Systems LLC, a satellite and broadband service provider based in
Germantown, Maryland.