| Technical and business efficiencies | |
| “Converged systems provide both technical and business efficiencies by combining server, storage and networks into a single framework that helps to transform the economics of running the data centre” |  Trilogy Technologies : John Casey |
| Converged systems are used by organisations to centralise the management of IT resources, consolidate systems, increase resource utilisation rates and lower costs. The proliferation of IT sprawl in data centres has contributed to rising operational costs, reducing productivity and stifling agility and flexibility. Maintenance and operations can consume two-thirds of an organisation’s technology budget leaving just a third of the budget for new IT initiatives. This ratio prevents IT from supporting new business initiatives or responding to real application demands. A converged infrastructure addresses the problem of IT sprawl by pooling and sharing IT resources. Rather than dedicating a set of resources to a particular computing technology, application or line of business, converged systems create a pool of virtualised servers, storage and networking capability that is shared by multiple applications and lines of business. Converged systems provide both technical and business efficiencies by combining server, storage and networks into a single framework that helps to transform the economics of running the data centre and accelerating the transition to IP storage to help build infrastructures that are ‘cloud ready’. Several characteristics make converged systems well suited to cloud deployments. These include the ability to pool IT resources, to automate resource provisioning and to scale up and down capacity quickly to meet the needs of dynamic computing workloads. Trilogy designs and delivers ICT solutions to meet organisations’ strategic business needs and offers converged systems such as Flexpod and ExpressPod from NetApp/Cisco. These combine storage, networking, compute, security and virtualisation (VMware or Microsoft) into a single pre-accredited system, followed through with leading edge managed services and 24/7 support from Trilogy. Tel: (01) 476 8050 Email: info@trilogytechnologies.ie |
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| CapEx offset by benefits | |
| “Converged systems provide both technical and business efficiencies by combining server, storage and networks into a single framework that helps to transform the economics of running the data centre” |  Comsys : Ben McGahon, managing director |
| There is little doubt that the converged systems market and products are now established for many enterprise organisations as the optimal infrastructure platform for their critical applications. Through working with our customers, we have found that converged infrastructure provides a greatly reduced TCO and vastly improved time to delivery that traditional silo approaches simply cannot match. By having a pre-configured, pre-built, optimised and standardised platform, customers make great strides in delivering efficiencies back to the business in terms of system management and greatly reduced downtime. In some cases we see a 90% reduction in time to deliver fully configured platforms, reducing project time to delivery and, crucially, reducing TCO and OpEx costs. In many cases, a large, disparate infrastructure of network, server [virtualised] and storage can take six to nine months to deliver fully optimised back to the business. In converged systems, our average completed delivery and hand over process is 50 calendar days.Furthermore, because converged systems such VCE Vblocks are so highly optimised, customers can greatly reduce their software license footprint. Without question, with converged infrastructure you can do more with less; less infrastructure, less people to manage, less data centre footprint and associated power, cooling and rack costs and greatly reduced TCO.Although there is typically a higher CapEx cost initially, when the long term TCO of three to five years is taken into account, converged systems come into their own and the benefits have been proven time and again to exceed even ambitious initial estimates. In addition to the benefits already highlighted above, in many cases such as with financial and pharmaceutical customers, we have found that providing an ISO certified and validated converged platform has allowed them to reduce many associated soft costs. For example, we have seen organisations achieve great savings in terms of validation and compliance. 
As the converged or integrated market has grown the vendors are now releasing smaller versions of their converged infrastructure systems to suit a wider range of customers. This is particularly beneficial for customers who until recently may have perceived converged infrastructure to be too expensive in terms of initial CapEx. |
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