Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) company Pivot3 launched a “priority-aware” software platform that the company says will allow enterprises to run multiple applications better and faster.

The HCI software platform, called Acuity, uses non-volatile memory express (NVMe) flash technology, which Pivot3 acquired from its NextGen Storage purchase in January 2016. The company says the NVMe technology delivers deliver six times the performance of conventional HCI solutions. This means IT can improve response times for databases, enterprise applications, and business analytics, Pivot3 CEO Ron Nash said.

“Adding NVMe brings data into the hyperconverged center far faster,” Nash said, adding that Pivot3 is the only HCI vendor to use NVMe technology. “Having faster processing means there are many more applications in the data center that now we can process. It’s like a turbocharger for performance to keep the data flying fast.”

Acuity also allows enterprises to run two to three times more virtual machines per HCI node.

The second unique thing about Acuity, Nash said, is that it is a "priority-aware" hyperconverged infrastructure platform. By priority-aware, he means it has an advanced policy-based management system that determines which applications have the highest priority.

“For example, a hospital with a patient care application that needs to run to keep patients alive — that would be your most critical application,” he explained. “Monthly bills you send to vendors would be your lowest. You can specify all that by policy for your applications, and the software auto-manages those for hundreds or thousands of applications running on your system.”

Nash said changing customer demand drove Acuity’s new features.

Previously, enterprises would deploy HCI for single, standalone use cases, like virtual desktop infrastructure.

“Last year was a big change in that one-third of our revenue came from new customers that instead of just putting one application on it, hyperconverged had become enough of a proven entity that they were immediately putting multiple applications on it,” Nash said. “But then you have to have tools to manage those multiple applications.”

Nash said Acuity also means Pivot3 will be able to “offer higher performance” compared to its competitors in the HCI space, such as Nutanix and SimpliVity, which was recently acquired by HPE.

“Once you get into hundreds of applications and certainly with thousands of applications, you need to have some software to help with the automation,” he said. “We will get the customers with the most demanding needs for performance. We out-distanced our competitors.”