There is a misconception that hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) only matters for large organizations. This misconception is a product of many hyperconverged solution vendors supplying only enterprise markets, and not providing solutions that are cost effective for the SMB. Scale Computing Chief Executive Officer, Jeff Ready, and Co-Founders Jason Collier and Scott Loughmiller experienced that lack of focus in the mid-market first hand. Their collective experiences are the reason they set out to revolutionize the virtualization market for small and mid-market organizations when they created Scale Computing.
One of Jeff’s earliest memories was working on Saturday mornings with his dad, a Manager of Information Systems, what we now call an IT guy, for a mid-sized industrial construction company. Like today, upgrades were made on nights and weekends, the budget was limited, and the team was understaffed. This meant teams were spread thin and the job required them to be available at odd hours to make sure things were running smoothly. And if they weren’t - they were responsible for fixing it on a moments notice.
For Jason, it was infrastructure vendor’s absence in the mid-market that became a personal pain-point. This story takes place before the conception of Scale Computing, meaning this general lack of focus on the mid-market existed long before HCI was introduced. Having just moved to Northern California, he was in search of equipment to build a small datacenter. He found the equipment he wanted to purchase, but, to his surprise, his attempts to speak with someone over the phone repeatedly failed. This was due in large part to the fact that Jason was a small customer. Eventually, he physically got in his car and drove down the company’s headquarters in order to speak with someone in person.
At Scott's first startup he found that building, managing, and growing the IT infrastructure was needlessly complex and expensive. Each stage of growth meant either building and managing something custom or spending far beyond what was budgeted for something off the shelf. In either case, the unpredictable and rapid growth likely meant an expensive forklift upgrade and painful migration to something larger within a few quarters.
Scale Computing’s focus on, and presence in, the mid-market is not by accident. Jeff, Jason, and Scott recognized a hole in the market and wanted to fill it. Scale Computing revolutionized the virtualization market for small and mid-sized organizations by creating an infrastructure that allows teams to do more with less. Scale Computing HC3 puts simplicity at the forefront - it is one of the core components of the design and UI.
SMBs are oftentimes plagued with challenges around staffing and budgeting. That is why Scale Computing created a solution that is highly available and completely scalable, able to grow at the same rate your company is growing. It doesn’t need a team of SAN experts, networks experts, or virtualization experts to make it all run. It eliminates the need for traditional virtualization software and is ideal for companies operating on a smaller budget.
Jeff, Jason, and Scott’s personal experiences drove them to create a product that is radically simple. They set out to prove that HCI is the ideal infrastructure platform for distributed enterprises, global retailers, and SMBs alike. This vision extends up from our mission, values, and culture, to our award-winning solutions.
