Virtualise and thrive in unpredictable business environments

Craig Paul, HP South Africa’s StorageWorks Business Unit Manager, discusses how converged infrastructure simplifies IT management

How can your business thrive in unpredictability? One way is to virtualise storage resources as part of a converged infrastructure.

To achieve the true benefits of convergence, you need storage solutions that easily accommodate data growth and align tightly to business applications. Companies need to adopt a virtualised storage infrastructure that is:
•    Virtualised to allow dynamic provisioning of resources to support applications when capacity is needed most
•    Capacity optimised to lower the cost and reduce management complexities when responding to explosive data growth
•    Application integrated to enable smooth orchestration across the network and allow massive data sets to bypass network limitations
•    Standardised on common platforms and components to lower costs and enable scale-out architectures

IT sprawl has brought organisations to breaking point by increasing complexity, which increases operational costs and stifles innovation. Today, organisations spend up to 70 percent of their IT budgets managing operations and only 30 percent driving new IT initiatives.

Benefits of converged infrastructure

Converged infrastructure provides the blueprint for organisations to eliminate technology silos, simplify the management of their environment and drive integration across the data centre. This allows them to spend much more of the IT budget on business innovation.

This is achieved by converging server, storage and networks with facilities – all managed through a common management platform. The result is an infrastructure that delivers a new level of simplicity, integration, and automation that can accelerate business outcomes that matter most:
•    Faster time to revenue
•    Lower costs of acquisition and implementation
•    Flexibly respond to business changes
•    Lower risks

Create a virtual pool of shared storage resources

Creating a virtual pool of shared storage resources is a key technology in the evolution to a converged infrastructure – companies need to be able to consolidate servers, storage and desktops. This enables them to easily shift resources as the organisation requires.

Companies also struggle with sprawl from desktops, portables and mobile devices. Data now resides on a large number of devices, which makes it difficult to manage, secure and back up. Client virtualisation can simplify management, improve security and reduce backup traffic on the network.

To stay competitive, organisations need IT environments that are ready to evolve as business needs change. It’s no longer feasible for companies to find individual products to solve individual problems. The infrastructure of tomorrow is converged, and it requires a conscious decision today.