Inside Track: Converged infrastructure smooths a path to the cloud

Ergo Steve Blanche, head of solutions

Developing a converged infrastructure for your organisation requires a clear assessment and understanding of the existing infrastructure and its components, in order to effectively align with a CI platform. Even replacing a recently procured SAN may be cost effective in the long run if a suitable alternative can ensure all of the elements within the infrastructure align with your converged platform strategy.

Typically, a CI aligns with a single vendor or at least a reduction in vendors. However, this is not always a realistic option. Tools such as Microsoft’s System Center Suite deliver end to end monitoring, deployment, back-ups, and automation etc. within a consolidated set of management and administration tools, helping to achieve an effective CI strategy.

Ultimately, a hyper-converged infrastructure delivers the highest levels of optimisation as these are purpose-built environments rather than a managed collection of converge-able components – think of a preconfigured rack containing all of the compute, networking and storage requirements that scales seamlessly by adding components or racks.
Ergo deploy Converged and Hyper-Converged infrastructure solutions tailored to meet our customer requirements, ensuring success and realising real business outcomes.

VCE Nigel Moulton, CTO, EMEA

According to a VCE sponsored IDC study, businesses reported that by using a converged infrastructure solution they experienced 96% less downtime, new services and products got to market 4.4 times faster, 41% less time was spent keeping the lights on, and they delivered 4.6 times more apps compared to the previous year.

The businesses surveyed found they could spend the time gained, better elsewhere, doing more productive tasks. However, these improvements aren’t just about getting services online faster. They result in a more productive IT department and allow businesses to become more responsive to their customers, as applications were deployed in a third of the time.
The study also found companies that previously spent 78% of their time and budgets on just keeping the lights on cut that time to 46%. With this time gained, staff were able to implement new projects and create new products. With the right solution in place, converged infrastructure transforms IT operations, meaning it requires less effort to manage servers, storage and networking components, and can also save the considerable amount of time involved in having to manage patching and software updates too.

This new-found productivity has a direct impact on downtime, with companies reporting a 96% decrease, thanks to the reliability of converged infrastructure. Some reported that downtime issues were completely eliminated since they introduced such solutions.

A well-managed IT infrastructure is vital for current and future business success, and as such, businesses are viewing converged infrastructure as a real long-term solution. They are turning to market leaders such as VCE which leads the industry for converged infrastructure solutions, with a 27.8% share of the market according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Tracker. In addition, IDC predicts that IT departments will spend more than $10 billion this year globally on converged infrastructure systems, and the converged infrastructure market will experience a healthy growth rate of 27% over the next three years to represent $14.3 billion of investment in 2018.

The future of IT is upon us and converged infrastructure is here to stay. It is no surprise that the adoption of converged systems is growing, with the direct benefits it provides. With a simple solution in place, businesses can learn to fully rely upon their IT departments, and continue to innovate and thrive in the 21st century.