Interview with Virtual Instruments President, Ray Villeneuve

The spread of virtual IT infrastructures is causing data flood with big data and IoT. As a result, the cost of storage infrastructure for the enterprise increases significantly. It is crucial to improve the competitiveness of enterprises to operate enterprise data processing such as network and server including storage more efficiently and stably. This is the time that data center reconfiguration is required.

Virtual Instruments, a leading provider of storage performance analytics solutions, has recently entered the Korean market and is drawing attention. Virtual Instruments has partnered with Gingko’s Technology (CEO, Che Yeon-geun) earlier this month to pioneer the Korean market.

Virtual Instruments (VI) storage performance analysis solutions have been introduced only indirectly and intermittently in the domestic market. It has also been bundled with EMC storage products. The storage performance analysis market did not grow as expected. However, VI considers that the Korean market is likely to grow sufficiently.

"Although our primary customers are global storage vendors, we are also a target customer for ISP conglomerates as storage end users, telecom companies and technology companies," said Ray Villeneuve, president of VI who visited Seoul to complete the partnership. “ICT companies are very important market in Korea.” he said. VI`s solutions have already been verified for compatibility with equipment from world-class storage and IT infrastructure vendors including EMC, Hitachi, NetApp, IBM, HP and Pure Storage. In addition to the recently adopted AFA method, Hybrid (HFA) and Software Defined Storage (SDS) are also used. A further strength is that it is a software platform that is easy to operate with a Web-based GUI.

VI has already decided to supply one of Korean major telecom companies and one ICT public agency to provide its storage optimization solutions, Load DynamiX Enterprise and VirtualWisdom. "Load Dynamics Enterprise is a solution that tests and analyzes performance by simulating the terabyte and petabyte workloads of IT infrastructure applications such as storage," explained Ray Villeneuve. He also added, "Enterprise engineers provide insights when making storage choices.”

VirtualWisdom is a real-time monitoring and management solution for storage performance. Ray Villeneuve advised, "Both solutions are offered to storage vendors and companies in a SW and HW convergence model. Analysis and monitoring solutions should be introduced to assess the performance requirements of enterprise IT infrastructures and to minimize performance degradation during operation.”

Given the unfamiliar domestic environment of storage and IT infrastructure performance analysis, VI and Ginhko’s Technology are planning several workshops and seminars annually. VI will soon open a Korean branch in Seoul. The establishment of a branch office in front of Japan, which has a larger market size than Korea, sees Korean companies` technology adaptation as high as that.

Ray Villeneuve said, "Minimizing speed and errors in storage infrastructure is a necessity, not an option now.” We hope that Virtual Instruments, the world`s only storage performance testing and monitoring solution company, will partner with the successful business of Korean companies.

VI currently has over 500 clients worldwide. Storage companies, as well as GE, Cox Communications, ExxonMobil, LinkedIn and T-Mobile are included as client corporations of VI.

By Lee Kyu Hwa Editorial reporter david@


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