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Introduction

The cost of supporting IT infrastructure is well documented. Depending on with whom you speak, this can be anywhere between 65-80+% of the operational expenses within the IT business. Conversely, this also means for every dollar invested in capital, it will take 3-5 times that investment to upkeep the investment over the useful life of the infrastructure.

One of the drivers for this misalignment is that while technology companies try to sell more technologies that make lives and business simpler, the combination of disparate technology components and its interdependencies is growing more complex.

Even mid-sized companies have multiple administrators for specialized datacenter functions – eg. Server administrators, virtual machine administrators, network administrators and/or storage administrators. Neuralytix has long espoused the need for enterprises to stop focusing on the infrastructure, and pay more attention to the information enablement that allow the enterprise to gain insight and generate innovation.

When simple is … simple!

Neuralytix research continues its endorsement for converged infrastructure of all kinds and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) has emerged as a compelling option for many workloads. The benefit of HCI is that it is simple – one physical chassis includes all the infrastructure components (computer, network, storage) as well as the operating system and management layer (server, network, storage and VM administration).

HCI vendors such as Gridstore have essentially taken the traditional datacenter, and actually simplified it. No longer are complex physical interconnections required between the various infrastructure components. Instead, the all-in-one packaging of HCI solutions means that essentially, the only two cables that need to be attached are the network cable(s) (to connect to the core network) and the power cable(s).

All HCI vendors have also assimilated the disparate pieces of management software into easy to use, single pane of glass, all-inclusive piece of management software that provide the necessary provisioning, orchestration, instrumentation and management of the entire HCI network. This is truly a case where HCI vendors have actually made infrastructure simpler, by making it simpler!

What about my team?

Some IT administrators are hesitant about HCI because they are concerned about the impact to their specialized staff. Others, and Neuralytix supports this view, see it as an opportunity for IT admins that previously have been very narrowly focused to have a broader view of the organization’s infrastructure.  Not only does this aid in their skill development, but the organization benefits by having each admin contributing and managing a broader scope of the infrastructure.

Guidance

Neuralytix believes that HCI is not a question of “if,” but one of “when.”

Organizations should look at HCI as an opportunity to drive effectiveness and efficiency in their operations. With a lower up-front capital investment, they can get more “bang per buck” and administrators can worry less about infrastructure and more about the applications and workloads that are the life of the business.

 

 

This Insight is sponsored by Gridstore. However, the opinions are those of Neuralytix and its analysts.

 

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