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.
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?
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