CIOs
will find themselves at an interesting crossroads this year as their
organizations struggle to become Digital-Enabled Enterprises, businesses
that embrace technology and services to improve the customer
experience. This kind of change is pervasive. It is much more than
simply acknowledging the importance of cloud, analytics, mobile and
social strategies to the organization; in effect, it is a transformation
that will lead many companies to truly leverage data as an asset, to
integrate with the world around them in real time, and to explore new
models of doing business made possible only through the maturation of
the organization's digital capabilities. According to Logicalis US, an
international IT solutions and managed services provider (
www.us.logicalis.com),
CIOs who aren't ready will be left behind. Smart IT pros who want to
cement their value within the organization of tomorrow have already
begun preparing their IT infrastructure to handle the experiential
demands that will soon be coming their way. For those at the beginning
of this curve, implementing a
converged infrastructure strategy is a solid first step.
"Paving
the way for tomorrow's on-demand IT service delivery model requires
both a shift in thinking from a technology-based to a services-based
philosophy and an honest assessment of where the organization's
technology infrastructure stands today," says Bob Hankins, Vice
President, Data Center Solutions, Logicalis US. "This kind of change
does not happen quickly. It's a transformation journey
that begins with the preparation of in-house systems to take greater
advantage of virtual machines in the cloud - and that starts with the
basic building blocks of virtualization and implementing a converged
infrastructure."
"For
organizations preparing themselves for the ‘digital economy,' this is
an important juncture," says Chuck Farrow, Vice President, Strategic
Partner Alliances, Logicalis US. "Participating in the digital economy
and delivering the computing experience workers demand necessitates a
reliance on the cloud, something that can be expensive, discouraging and
ineffective without the underlying advantages made possible through a
converged infrastructure solution like HPE ConvergedSystem."
Five Principles for Implementing a Converged Infrastructure
By
taking things one step at a time, CIOs can begin today to prepare their
IT infrastructure for tomorrow's digital economy. Keeping in mind the
goal of becoming a broker of IT services to users who are looking for a
consumer-like experience in the way their at-work IT performs, IT
professionals can plan a strategy that relies on as-a-service options in
the cloud to create a new kind of relationship between the organization
and its IT staff. The first step along that journey is to invest in a
converged infrastructure (CI). To help, the CI experts at Logicalis
have identified five important principles to get any organization's CI
movement off the ground.
- Put a plan in place:
As cloud computing makes its way to the top of CIOs' priority lists, a
well-implemented virtualization plan can be the key to success.
Virtualization can lead to a truly converged infrastructure that is more
efficient, adaptable to changing business requirements, and easier to
maintain and support. Unfortunately, a surprising number of enterprise
IT departments don't have a plan in place that clearly defines the goal
for their virtualized IT environment or any next steps beyond
virtualization. They need a blueprint for IT transformation, a step-by-step guide that helps them determine where they are as well as where they're headed.
- Centralize management tasks:
The speed and agility made possible by deploying a converged
infrastructure that is designed to meet the needs of specific
applications allows IT to focus on the business rather than trying to
source individual best-of-breed components while managing this
infrastructure from a single pane of glass. Therefore, a converged
infrastructure is more than a preconfigured resource; it requires - and makes possible - a centralized management framework.
- Establish a starting point:
CIOs have always known CI offers a myriad of technical and business
advantages; what's changing is how CI is being used - and these new
implementations can quite literally spell relief for CIOs' shadow IT
woes by answering the need for better, faster delivery of technology
services. Targeting converged infrastructures to run mission-critical
applications and workloads like VDI or mobility is a perfect example:
The organization gets the benefits of a converged infrastructure where
they're needed most, and the CIO establishes a starting point with a
high-performing working model that can be extended incrementally
throughout the organization as time and resources allow.
- Don't get stalled between CI and the cloud:
Enterprise organizations are clearly taking the steps needed to become
virtualized, and many already have a solid converged infrastructure
foundation in place. The problem is, they've stalled there; they've
stopped just short of implementing a cloud strategy that can give them
the kinds of IT efficiencies they wanted when they started the
virtualization process.
- Embrace the service provider model:
Servers, storage, networks, applications and management - all the
technologies the enterprise uses today - have evolved to the point where
they can be converged into a single entity. In effect, the
capabilities that a converged infrastructure makes possible can turn a
corporate IT department into a service provider rather than a cost
center, though each organization is in a different stage of its IT
transformation journey.