Converged infrastructure (CI) is a hit in the C suite, and not just among CIOs. Chief marketing officers (CMOs) and chief financial officers (CFOs) have also become champions of converged infrastructure, although often for different reasons.
In this final part of my three-part series, I’ll examine how converged infrastructure solutions like the VCE Vblock align with the Chief Marketing Officer’s sweet spots.
For years, CMOs regarded IT infrastructure as so much plumbing. But the commoditization of IT has thrown a wrench into the conventional wisdom that says CMOs aren’t interested in technology. As the largest consumer of technology in the enterprise, today’s CMO is very tech savvy. In fact, analysts predict that CMOS will soon outspend CIOs on technology.
Why are CMOs so taken up with tech? Because they see a clear line between innovation and competitive differentiation. Those companies that leverage new technologies first and best—whether Big Data or WebRTC—become the market disruptors rather than the disrupted. To that end, here are four things that CMOs are most fond of when it comes to converged infrastructure systems:
1. It’s ready now, not six months from now.
CI systems are shipped as pre-integrated, pre-validated appliances—they’re one big box that works right out of the box. This is a radical departure from traditional IT systems, where IT managers often have to buy, borrow and build a solution from different parts, then test it and re-test it to make sure it works as expected. As a result, marketing organizations can get new apps ramped up fast—4x faster according to a recent study of VCE Vblock systems.
2. It delivers more bang for marketing’s bucks.
One of the main reasons that CMOs like hosted Cloud providers such as Microsoft and Amazon, other than speed of deployment, is the cost. With Cloud providers, you pay for what you use and you pay less because of multi-tenancy. CI systems work the same way—pay per use and share the costs—with the added benefit of more security and control.
3. It’s dependable with a capital D.
Reliability and scalability are important to CMOs, particularly as they fund mission-critical projects such as real-time customer service applications and Big Data analytics. VCE Vblock systems have been shown to reduce downtime by 96% and, like all CI systems, can be easily expanded to offer extra capacity as applications grow over time.
4. It’s simple math, not rocket science.
Converged infrastructure systems remove the complexity from technology acquisition by combining everything you need—networking, storage and computing power—into a single appliance. It’s simple math: one solution from one vendor is a lot easier to manage than three solutions from three different vendors.
VCE Vblocks also provide CMOs with peace of mind because they use the industry’s leading technology from EMC, Cisco and VMware, rolled into a single solution and supported by a single company, VCE. As a partner to EMC, Cisco, VMware and VCE, Rolta AdvizeX can help CMOs size, acquire and install Vblock solutions for a variety of applications, from internal test cases to full-scale production deployments for millions of users.
To learn more about VCE solutions or to test drive a Vblock in one of our customer performance centers, talk to your Rolta AdvizeX sales rep or contact our corporate headquarters at 216-901-1818. ▪