World renowned consultant, educator, and author Peter Drucker said, “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”
When it comes to IT operational efficiency, doing things right means streamlining IT. By doing so, IT organizations can save time and expenses – devoting more resources to strategic activities.
But, it’s not about cutting corners. IT needs to be sure that the changes we make don’t sacrifice the quality of the product or service – in other words, we need to do the right things.
Streamlining IT with hyperconvergence
So, how do you trim complexity without sacrificing quality? According to some IT teams, adopting hyperconverged infrastructure is a solid step in the right direction.
Hyperconverged infrastructure can provide businesses with significantly increased efficiency, specifically operational efficiency. According to a report from IDC, businesses that implemented hyperconverged infrastructure realized an 81 percent increase in time spent on new projects and innovation. Additionally, these businesses also saw a 33 percent increase in budget spent on new technology projects and purchases. Hyperconvergence allowed these IT teams to spend less time keeping the lights on, so they could spend more time delivering value to the business.
Hyperconverged technology increases operational efficiency by combining 8 to 12 disparate IT components and services into a single solution that easily scales on demand, allowing IT teams to focus on accelerating business innovation. By massively simplifying the IT infrastructure stack, hyperconverged infrastructure improves IT agility and time to production, reduces IT costs and streamlines operations, and mitigates risk with enterprise resiliency and built-in data protection.
Less complexity means more time for innovation
Customers polled in that same IDC study reported that their IT operations saw a significant increase in efficiency once hyperconvergence was implemented. One IT administrator explained the increase by saying, “We’re finding this [infrastructure] just runs, and because there’s so much less complexity, so much less inventory and assets to manage, it gives us the ability to go work on other things that we had not had the time to in the past.” What’s more, customers noticed “… a huge reduction with IOPS across our environment.”
The author of the paper, Eric Sheppard, Research Director at the IDC Corporation, commented, “Customers tell us that ‘mitigating risk to the business’ and ‘supporting business revenue objectives’ are the two most important business outcomes that can be achieved through the use of IT…It should be no surprise to learn that IT departments are increasingly looking for infrastructure that improves resource utilization rates while addressing productivity and agility within the datacenter. Organizations around the world have turned to converged systems to achieve just such goals.”
Why choose HPE SimpliVity hyperconverged?
The customers who participated in the study all have one thing in common: they chose HPE SimpliVity as their hyperconverged vendor of choice. HPE SimpliVity stands apart from the competition with the ability to globally manage all resources and workloads from a single interface. Two features in particular ranked high in customer survey results: the built-in data protection and accelerated data efficiency. IDC discovered that customers not only save time using HPE SimpliVity backup and replication features, but they were also able to retire third-party data protection solutions for HPE SimpliVity workloads. The survey found that:
- Over 50% of HPE SimpliVity customers using the built-in data protection features are retiring their incumbent third-party backup and/or replication solutions.
- 79% of customers see significant improvement in backup and disaster recovery processes, due to global deduplication and replication features and greatly reduced RTO/RPO times.
- 75% of customers realize a 65% improvement in utilization of storage resources.
Customers make a compelling case that HPE SimpliVity hyperconverged infrastructure is effective in doing the right things and producing the desired results. As IDC indicates, “Hyperconverged scale-out and feature-rich systems are driving real benefits within datacenters around the world, impacting CAPEX and, more importantly, OPEX.”
To learn more about the operational efficiencies that hyperconverged customers experienced, read the full IDC report.
About Jesse St. Laurent
Jesse St. Laurent is the Chief Technologist for HPE Hyperconverged and SimpliVity. He uses his 20 years of experience to engage channel partners, evaluate emerging technologies, and shape innovative technology solutions involving data center modernization. For more information on how hyperconverged infrastructure can elevate your hybrid IT environment, download the free HPE SimpliVity edition of Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Dummies ebook.
To read more articles from Jesse St. Laurent, check out the HPE Converged Data Center Infrastructure blog.
