Measuring Traditional Data Center Inadequacies: Making the case for HPE Synergy Composable Infrastructure
Modern companies possess an assortment of IT needs and workloads. Traditional IT processes and systems depended upon on-premise solutions that required manual updates, extensive time to expand and countless inefficiencies. In response, software developers began looking for ways to create solutions that provide IT-as-a service and by extension IT infrastructure-as-a-service. According to Network World, composable infrastructure represents one approach to optimizing IT resources and bolstering business agility.
How does Composable Infrastructure work? Provisioning takes place from a shared capacity, but the adaptive, compose of the infrastructure resides within an enterprise data center. Moreover, the flexibility created through such systems, such as HPE Synergy Composable Infrastructure, gives rise to its increased demand among mid-sized and large enterprises.
A recent IDC publication dove into the principles behind composable infrastructures and brought to light how they curtail current data center inefficiencies. To maintain competitive advantage and keep IT costs in check, today’s businesses must understand these facts and how they build the business case for migration to a composable system.
Current Data Center Inefficiencies
Traditional data center and IT storage solutions suffer from significant inadequacies. These inadequacies derive from the need to approach processes and activities as manual, labor-intensive tasks. For example, consider these three data center inefficiencies associated with traditional systems:
- Team members spend too much time focusing on repetitive tasks that can be automated in composable infrastructure. According to the IDC study, the efficiency of staff members rests at 55%. When two members spend too much time focusing on problems that could be automated, efficiency decreases.
- Lack of automation and extensive provisioning tasks. A lack of automation and technology-based solutions within the provisioning process may open the door to additional errors and additional delays. Manual processes can cause workflow management issues and problems with completing integral functions. Therefore, business customers may turn to a competitor with a faster processing rate and capability to handle their needs with fewer delays.
- Over provisioning and underutilization costing in both performance and financially. Another problem surrounding technology is efficiency, when workers approach provisioning manually, they may overlook pre-existing code that already accomplishes a given task. Such duplication contributes to unnecessary redundancy, and by extension, duplication leads to subsequent waste of resources. In other words, the system performance efficiency declines, performing like functions and limiting available IT resources.
Leveraging a composable infrastructure transforms these inefficiencies into workflow improvements and automated processes. Instead of underutilizing wasting resources,companies realize a responsive, demand-driven data center. The result is infrastructure that flexes to meet demand, even when such demands exceed the typical strain on resources.
Making the Business Case for HPE Synergy Composable Infrastructure.
The rise of composable infrastructure represents advancement in digital transformation (DX). Such transformation provides significant benefits to companies, and multiple forms of transformation in the IT landscape exist, including composable and hyperconverged infrastructure. While a hyperconverged solution transforms all processes into a software-defined activity, a composable infrastructure can serve as an in-between measure for companies.
For instance, it allows IT team members to manage both physical and virtual workloads from the same environment, further optimizing IT infrastructure management. Moreover, a composable architecture offers key benefits that pique the interest of companies struggling with DX or attempting to manage IT transformation in the following areas:
- Companies Want to Introduce Technologies That Streamline and Automate Repetitive Tasks.
Going back to the leading problems with traditional IT infrastructure—a lack of automation—composable infrastructure, such as that within HPE Synergy, eliminates manual processes.
For instance, unified application programming interfaces (APIs) within the system allow for ongoing provisioning needs based on resources within existing systems. Although hyperconverged infrastructure offers a similar capability, only composable infrastructure allows for a seamless integration between current-generation and next-generation applications. In other words, the APIs serve as a connection, and IT resources adjust as needed, while providing the same functionality as found within manual management of resources.
Organizations create infrastructure as a code through HPE Synergy Composable Infrastructure, allowing for faster deployment of applications—a critical function for businesses with an ever-evolving IT demand.
Software-defined intelligence also uses the same benefits in “template form” to optimize workloads and management. Such functions decrease risk of disruption during upgrades while also improving operational efficiency.
Finally, fluid resource pools allow for ongoing change between computing units and data persistence pools. In other words, users can create and manage physical, virtual, hybrid and containerized units without waste and risk of overprovisioning.
- Organizations Need Operational Agility to Continue Digital Transformation, Not Reinvent Their Entire Infrastructure.
With changing consumer and client demands, composable infrastructure serves as a foundation for DX. With traditional architecture any change can amount to systemwide reboots, if not provisioning, and extensive disruptions. Instead of the continual refresh, composable systems provide both the virtual and physical environments needed to gradually move to a new platform or processes. In other words, composability amounts to agility in infrastructure. The blending of both cloud-based solutions, including both private and public clouds, as well as traditional servers, ensures a smooth transition. As a result, efficiency increases over time without sacrificing short-term demand or availability of IT resources.
Such functions have extensive applications in fields where data maintenance and integrity are crucial. For example, the health industry continues to undergo DX, and stringent laws govern the migration and maintenance of protected health information (PHI) and data. Instead of risking the loss of patient records, and potentially loss of care treatment plans, organizations can turn to composable infrastructure to implement small-to-large changes. This means your data moves smoothly and without disruption to ongoing use of existing systems.
- Synergy Composable Infrastructure can Lead to Cost Savings.
In fact, total cost of operations stands out as a leading criterion for selecting infrastructure components. In combination with the need to lower risk and reduce capital expenditure (capex), composable solutions offer the promise of cost savings through both improved efficiency and cost avoidance from ongoing maintenance of systems.
Since composable systems rely on automated, manual and hybridized approaches to infrastructure management, demand for physical infrastructure decreases. For instance, if a company wishes to deploy a new service or application, composable infrastructure enables testing and launch without necessarily implementing new physical resources. However, the company may still leverage existing physical resources as part of such implementation.
Fewer physical demands and improvements in efficiency contribute naturally to improved utilization of all resources. While this is most commonly compared and used when referring to IT resources, including hardware and software, it applies to people as well. Such functionality enables scalability, building business agility and responsiveness. Meanwhile, workers, instead of concentrating on repetitive tasks, can focus on actual needs, such as reviewing data and interacting with other staff and customers. In a sense, composable infrastructure puts more power in the hands of your team members to use data and let the software handle the exhaustive process of provisioning and data management.
Composable Infrastructure Augments Basic and Complex Business IT Functions.
Organizations have many choices for digital IT infrastructure. All industries are experiencing some form of digital or virtual transformation. Meanwhile, cybersecurity and cost continue to be key concerns for organizations operating outdated, legacy systems. While converged and hyperconverged infrastructure solutions exist, as well as software-defined functions for every function, those that need more time to prepare for transformation or work through its challenges should consider composable infrastructure. In fact, HPE Synergy was built on this premise, provide a way to harmonize the process and avoid the pitfalls with traditional DX.
Of course, the path can still feel overwhelming and impossible. But the reward outweighs the growing pains. Bring your organization into the next century with access to next-generation applications and resources through composable infrastructure. As a bonus, the costs of switching could easily pay for themselves in significantly shorter periods than traditional, physical servers and hardware. It’s time to advance your data center management and provisioning processes with an adaptive solution that leverages the benefits of converged solutions with your existing resources. Reach out to comport for help with your composable infrastructure. As a leading IT Solutions Company, comport specialize in modern architecture and data center infrastructures
