Ann Marie Walter-Allen | Companies are scrubbing traditional data centre technology

The data centre is the heart of any company. In our modern era, if a company wants to scale up easily or fully optimise workloads then it’s imperative that this core be equipped with reliable, scalable and agile infrastructure that is impervious to outside conditions.

Today, that equates to moving to a hyper-converged infrastructure, or HCI, which is essentially an integrated software-defined data centre solution that combines compute, storage, networking and virtualisation into a single easily deployable appliance. It allows teams to simplify their IT management and reduce complexity; create a cloud-like experience in their own controlled data centre environments; and increase productivity of IT teams in order to drive business efficiency.

Before HCI, companies were struck with a high level of complexity when operating their data centre environments.

The traditional way meant an increased amount of hardware and software components, which often times seemed never-ending and required its own set of staffing and specialisations to manage. Moreover, there was the possibility of being faced with incompatibility issues that plagued IT teams when dealing with multiple vendors for each appliance and often times resulted in vendor lock-in.

But how does HCI simplify this?

Well, for one, by consolidating storage, compute, network, and virtualisation resources into a single console, companies are able to reduce their data-centre footprint. The Companies Office of Jamaica, for example, after their HCI installation, have been able to reduce their number of servers by 65 per cent without compromising efficiency, performance and agility.

With HCI, IT teams no longer need to be overwhelmed by an insurmountable volume of hardware to ‘babysit’, or be tied into ageing maintenance contracts. Instead, they can benefit from unparalleled simplicity that can be easily managed by junior administrators.

What’s more, a software-defined and hypervisor agnostic HCI, such as the one Nutanix offers, enables the freedom to choose and the ability to run workloads on top of what already exists, so that it’s easy to make the transition.

Cloud-like experience

Many businesses are moving to the public cloud due to a plethora of benefits, including reduced downtime and maintenance, and easy scalability when compared to traditional data centres. This allows for a quicker time-to-market and provides the agility required by enterprises today.

However, despite this, companies are also moving back on premises. According to a 2019 study done by Nutanix, “73 per cent of companies were reported to have repatriated to their own data centre environments”. But why is this?

The answer is simple: Most companies that moved away from the cloud were faced with issues such as security concerns over lack of control, as well as complex and uncertain legislation when it came to data privacy and protection.

But what if an IT team could experience all the benefits of the cloud on premises without compromising security and control?

HCI, like the public cloud, enables businesses to quickly scale up or down, based on demand, while also giving the freedom and control over data and applications. With a single click, businesses can expand or reduce critical apps on premises without downtime or disruptions to operations. Plus, with cloud intelligence, businesses are empowered to automate IT operations so that they can focus on what truly matters – the business.

Seamless and invisible

Data centre management is time-consuming and laborious. Managing traditional data centres is complex and requires substantial man-hours, both regular and overtime, doing constant checks and provisioning independent servers, storage and networking arrays so that users can work seamlessly and undisrupted.

This is made easy with modern HCI. A case in point is the Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo), which, after its HCI installation over one year ago, has experienced near zero downtime and a 70 per cent reduction in time to spin up new servers, ultimately freeing IT teams to focus on more value-driven projects.

With the more streamlined and efficient operations enabled by HCI, IT teams are able to become more productive, investing more time and resources into developing actual products for customers instead of constantly looking over appliances.

IT is more than just tech support. It is a business enabler and organisations must realise this so that they can unlock its full potential and reap the benefits, which will not only lead to a productive and fulfilled IT team, but also increase returns on investment and profitability for the business.

Infrastructure should be invisible and just simply do the work. That’s the whole premise of technology: to make things easier. But, it would seem traditional data centres are doing everything besides that.

The future of the data centre lies in hyper-converged infrastructure. The technology provides businesses with the ability to consolidate, optimise and virtualise IT infrastructure in order to simplify the management of complex workloads.

These capabilities not only reduce complexity by eliminating dependencies on multiple vendors or legacy hardware solutions, they also promote productivity, giving IT teams the freedom to focus on innovation. With these benefits at hand, it’s easy to see why many enterprises are turning their attention away from traditional approaches and towards this innovative new technology.

Ann Marie Walter-Allen is a director and chief marketing officer of Info Exchange Limited.

awalterallen@infoexchangeja.com