Shorten time-to-value, reduce costs and risks, and future-proof your investment
The dynamic, scalable infrastructure needed to support business and digital transformation has, by definition, to be incredibly powerful and flexible. From smart server and storage platforms to full blown hybrid/multi-cloud technology stacks, today’s solutions are packed with features and capabilities that can be configured and deployed in different ways to deal with a wide variety of current and future requirements and use cases.
The exact same technology stack can be finely tuned to support a specific workload, such as high-throughput transaction processing, complex business analytics, AI/machine-learning or virtual desktop serving. Conversely, it could be optimized to host virtual machines and/or microservices in a shared infrastructure, mixed workload environment. Beyond this, the stacks themselves may vary in composition. The same underlying server and storage technology, for example, could be running a database management system, an application server, or even a full hybrid cloud solution from VMware, Microsoft, Nutanix, SAP, Oracle or some other mainstream vendor.
A double-edged sword
All of this power and flexibility has the potential to yield compelling ROI with a high degree of future-proofing. In order to achieve this, however, the new platforms and systems components you bring into your data center have to be implemented in the right way. With so many configuration and deployment options, each with their associated dependencies, and with the state-of-the-art continuously advancing, even the most experienced of IT pros can struggle to find the time to work through it all.
The paradox is therefore that you want as much flexibility as possible to optimize the solution, deal with ongoing change and generally future-proof your investments, but more flexibility means more variables and choices. This can in turn increase implementation time and effort, and ultimately risk the system failing to meet expectations and deliver against its full potential.
Against this background, what are the alternatives to the pure DIY approach when implementing flexible, feature-rich technology products in a complex environment?
Download the Inside Track to read more…
Dale is a co-founder of Freeform Dynamics, and today runs the company. As part of this, he oversees the organisation’s industry coverage and research agenda, which tracks technology trends and developments, along with IT-related buying behaviour among mainstream enterprises, SMBs and public sector organisations.
Have You Read This?
From Barcode Scanning to Smart Data Capture
Beyond the Barcode: Smart Data Capture
The Evolving Role of Converged Infrastructure in Modern IT
Evaluating the Potential of Hyper-Converged Storage
Kubernetes as an enterprise multi-cloud enabler
A CX perspective on the Contact Centre
Automation of SAP Master Data Management
Tackling the software skills crunch