INTELLIGENT SOFTWARE BUSINESS
networking needs of the digital business
while also reducing both capital and
operating expenses.
The solution: Software-defined
infrastructure
A software-defined infrastructure holds
great promise in resolving the many
challenges IT organisations face as a result
of the digital transformation. Modernising
the datacentre with a software-defined
infrastructure enables IT to reliably
manage growing data and enable faster
time-to-market with agility, stability and
cost-savings.
Improved agility
In the traditional datacentre, provisioning
resources is complex and time-consuming.
However, with a software-defined
infrastructure, IT can use automation
and cloud-based, self-service capabilities
to respond to the needs of the business
in hours or days, not weeks or months,
and with less manual intervention. This
improved agility enables IT to deliver
resources more quickly and allows
business units to improve time-to-market
speeds for new services or applications,
ultimately improving their ability to
respond to customer needs and gain a
competitive advantage.
Moreover, a modern datacentre with
software-defined storage can support
unlimited storage, offering flexibility in
scaling as digital operations grow. This
enables digital businesses to efficiently host
and maintain large data stores including
video, graphics, audio and other TB-sized
files, enabling them to support the modern
apps their customers desire.
Business continuity
Modernising the datacentre with new
technologies doesn’t compel enterprise IT
organisations to give up on the stability
and reliability they so desperately need.
In fact, the opposite is true. The software-
defined infrastructure offers great business
continuity, enabling businesses to avoid
the pain of unplanned downtime.
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For storage specifically, a software-
defined infrastructure, with no single
points of failure, offers a highly
redundant design for system resiliency
and availability. What’s more, self-
healing capabilities minimise storage
administrator involvement and maximise
application availability following
hardware failure.
To ensure stability and business
continuity, the right software-defined
platform must be rigorously tested, include
24x7 worldwide technical support and be
fully integrated into upgrade processes so
enterprises can easily maintain and patch
their workload deployments.
Reduced costs
No matter the exact dollar amount, the fact
remains that IT is under pressure to do
more with less. Fortunately, the software-
defined infrastructure holds great promise
in this effort.
From an operational perspective,
IT can reduce OpEx with the efficient
management tools available as
part of a software-defined suite.
Automated management and single
storage administration tools enable
IT to manage the datacentre with
existing IT staff; no specialised
training is required, which reduces
IT cost overheads.
Additional cost reductions are
made possible by the freedom and
flexibility afforded by open source
solutions, which offer the freedom
and flexibility to leverage existing
investments in physical and virtual
systems. They also provide quick
access to the accelerated innovation
made by the large, open source
community, with the added benefit
of additional testing and support for
those features. When deciding on
a software-defined infrastructure,
only enterprise-level open source
vendors are flexible and agile
enough to enable faster innovation,
while ensuring stability, business
continuity and scalability, all in a
future-proofed design that will endure for
years to come.
Software-defined infrastructures offer
further reductions in CapEx spending
by leveraging investments already made
in datacentre infrastructure. When
including software-defined storage in
the infrastructure, IT organisations can
use existing or commodity hardware and
realise significant CapEx savings for their
expanding storage demands.
With digital transformation comes
a change in consumer expectations. In
fact, according to a recent study from
Dell EMC, 93 per cent of business leaders
worldwide agree that technology has
changed customer expectations in the past
five to 10 years. Greater digital connectivity
requires businesses to communicate with
their consumers and partners through
interactive, robust digital apps. The
convergence of these trends requires that
IT adopt new approaches to optimising
the datacentre while supporting agile
development processes. ¢
Issue 06
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS