The fast pace of technological change is part of what makes this industry exciting — and nerve-racking.
In our last blog post, we raised three perennial challenges faced by information technology managers:
- The need to continually increase productivity
- Pressure on the IT budget
- Retaining and motivating talented personnel
Did you notice this list omits the single biggest challenge to IT management? It’s a challenge that’s so big, so pervasive, that we accept its presence like humidity in July.
Your overarching challenge is to manage the fast pace of technological change.
It seems like 20 minutes ago we were designing monolithic arrays with specialized capabilities in networking and backup. Now we’re converging SAN, NAS and DAS in public or private clouds; or in a hyper-converged infrastructure — an HCI.
It’s HCI that’s really catching our customers’ eyes.
Typically, HCI technologies will slash a customers’ total cost of ownership as much as 50 percent compared to best-of-breed stacks. Compare HCI to cloud services, and costs can drop as much as 78 percent! Because of eye-popping economies like these, Rolta AdvizeX clients are asking us more and more how they can take advantage of them. It’s the latest example of technological change we’re helping clients navigate.
To refresh everyone’s understanding of what we mean by HCI, we find it makes the most sense when we define it this way: “Hyper-converged infrastructure” describes a system architecture powered by software-defined technologies to create infrastructure building blocks that provide compute virtualization, storage and data protection services and data center networking and security.
Of course, like everything, HCI comes in different flavors. You can build your own system, but doing so comes with the highest operating expenses. Or you can go with an engineered system that provides a simplified, cloud-like experience and the lowest opex possible. Basically, you plug it in and go.
HCI is proving to be the optimal solution for many applications we see. Let’s look at a handful. Four use cases stand out.
- Virtual machine primary storage. HCI is a cost-efficient way to protect data, accelerate flash performance, scale up and more; and management is simple.
- Virtual desktop infrastructure. Flash acceleration solves VDI storage headaches.
- Secure demilitarized zone. Among other benefits, encryption protects sensitive data.
- Remote office/back office. Integrated backup and replication accommodates remote site workloads, not to mention that simplified deployment saves time and money.
Keep up with change. The fast pace of technological change is part of what makes this industry exciting — and nerve-racking. Of all your choices, which are optimal for your particular situation? That’s the big question we exist to answer.
Think of us as elephant tamers. We have more recommendations to share regarding HCI. Want to see a few? Download a short industry whitepaper from IDC. It’s packed with information you can use for more-informed decisions.
Of course, get in touch with any question regarding what’s new, different or mystifying. Chances are we’ve encountered the same question many, many times. We’d be happy to share what we’ve learned. ▪