Why leveraging converged infrastructure will drive business agility

Businesses are constantly striving for efficiency across all departments, and when it comes to IT, that’s exactly what a converged infrastructure can provide. It can cure those headaches caused by IT in businesses by making it more cost-effective, more agile, reducing time spent on maintenance and increasing overall IT performance.

It goes without saying that today’s IT infrastructure has to be more flexible, scalable, and adaptable. Functionality is key and IT departments within businesses must make delivering new applications and adding new features more accessible, as well as having the ability to scale infrastructure quickly as demands change.

Research shows that businesses benefit significantly from using the cloud as a mechanism to execute plans and deliver IT resources. It can support high-level services such as databases and applications, providing a springboard for new business innovation.

In a recent study we conducted with IDC[i], businesses reported that by using a converged infrastructure they delivered 4.6 times more apps compared to the previous year, 41 per cent less time was spent keeping the lights on, new services and products got to market 4.4 times faster, and they experienced 96 per cent less downtime.

These numbers represent a significant opportunity to save time, and in the business world, time is money. The companies polled found they could spend the time gained, better elsewhere, doing more productive tasks. However, these improvements aren’t just about getting services online faster. Applications were deployed in a third of the time, and application development lifecycles were 55 per cent shorter. This not only results in a more productive IT department, but allows businesses to become more responsive to their end users too.

The study also found companies that previously spent 78 per cent of their time and budgets on just keeping the lights on cut that time to 41 per cent. This helps to create an environment where staff can increasingly focus on implementing new projects and creating new products. With the right solution in place, converged infrastructure standardises IT resources that can be deployed more easily. IT departments require less effort to manage their servers, storage and networking, and are also saving time in having to managing and patching software updates too.

This new-found productivity has a direct impact on downtime, with companies involved in the study reporting a 96 per cent decrease, thanks to the reliability of converged infrastructure. Some companies reported that downtime issues were completely eliminated since they introduced such solutions. Sometimes, more advanced technology is harder to maintain, but with converged solutions, this is not the case.

While converged infrastructure has some perceived challenges in terms of capital outlay and increased training requirements for staff, these are minor when compared to the benefits and longer-term return on investment that it delivers. A well-managed IT infrastructure is vital for current and future business success, and as such, businesses are viewing it as a real long-term solution, and certainly no flash in the pan. IDC predicts that IT departments will spend more than $10 billion this year on converged infrastructure systems, and the market will experience a healthy growth rate of 27 per cent over the next three years to represent a $14.3 billion spend in 2018, as a higher proportion of infrastructure investments go down the converged route.

The future in IT infrastructure is upon us, and results show it is here to stay. It’s no surprise that the adoption of converged infrastructure is growing, with the direct benefits it provides for businesses in terms of cost cutting, more productive use of staff time, increased system availability and quicker deployment of new applications. With a simple solution in place, businesses can learn to fully rely upon their IT departments, and continue to innovate and thrive in the 21st century.

[1] http://www.vce.com/asset/documents/idc-business-value-whitepaper.pdf