The Journey to Converged Infrastructure Via Prevalidated Designs

To effectively architect your system to take advantage of the cloud in your data centre requires a solid, well-considered strategy in consultation with the appropriate outside experts. When you get this right, the result is a transformation of an enterprise’s service delivery with all the competitive advantages your business needs.

The first step is usually to partner with an appropriate managed services and outsourcing provider with the experience, expertise and top-level industry partnerships (all important boxes to tick) to work with your enterprise to get the best job done. It is well worth doing you proper due diligence and homework before you commit to a service provider, because cloud implementation can have its issues.

When evaluating a service provider, it’s important to consider its technical, operational and financial skills. You need to thoroughly evaluate exactly where you are currently at, to plan for where you want to be. A good question to ask is what pre-scoping facilities does the partner offer. Logicalis Australia, for example, offers a Cloud Advisory Workshop, a Cloud Readiness Assessment and Cloud Implementation and Migration Planning workshop.

A 24/7 friend

A good provider will also monitor and manage a cloud environment around the clock so your enterprise has the maximum operational efficiency, freeing your staff from complex data centre duties, to focus on core profit-generating business.

Such a partner can combine its proven systems and data centre methodology to reduce costs and accelerate the deployment of a cloud system for your organisation – be it public, private or hybrid – so it can be implemented in an effective and rapid timeframe to ensure your success.

Of course, the top service providers in turn partner with other major technology players, like VMware, Netapp, and Cisco to name just a few. The quality of these partnerships is in itself a good measure of the dependability and value of any particular outside service provider – the big technology companies don’t agree to such partnerships lightly.

Of course, in its enterprise cloud strategy, your ideal service provider partner should also combine the technical staff as well as the best technologies to deliver the most effective IT cloud services to your organisation. Logicalis offers the Logicalis Private Virtual Data Centre (LPVDC) providing a complete infrastructure solution and the Logicalis Virtual Workspace Cloud Edition, a complete hosted desktop offering.

Prevalidated design advantage

Top service providers typically offer prevalidated designs, such as VSPEX or Flexpod, for very good reasons, so your enterprise benefits from the accumulated knowledge and cloud wisdom of past years. These facilitate the journey to converged infrastructure, enabling enterprises to buy applications, servers, networking and storage together as pre-integrated or validated solutions rather than as individual components.

In a recent report, Gartner found that converged infrastructure is “a 3.5% slice of the total IT infrastructure business, but one growing at over 50% annually, hitting $83 billion this year”.

IT giant Cisco says that prevalidated designs are based on common use cases and current engineering system priorities. These “incorporate a broad set of technologies, features and applications, all which have been thoroughly tested and document with the aim of ensuring a faster, more reliable and fully predictable deployment for your enterprise”.

Popular prevalidated solutions

VSPEX is a virtualisation solution offered by Cisco and EMC, that helps deploy virtual machines in a range of sizes, to meet application needs. Cisco says that EMC VSPEX, with Cisco Unified Data Center is “a validated reference configuration which delivers a virtualised data center in a rack composed of leading computing, networking, storage, and infrastructure software components”.

FlexPod is a integrated computing, networking, and storage solution developed by Cisco and NetApp and there are versions for large enterprises, high capacity performance for specialized workloads, and even for small to medium sized enterprises. NetApp says that “The unique appeal of the FlexPod is how it can deliver these benefits of Converged Infrastructure while still being flexible.  It starts with the combination of best of breed components from VMware, Netapp, Cisco, along with a pre-validated design that still accommodates flexibility in scale and configuration.”

So, it can be a great comfort to enterprises who partner with external experts to draw on such expertise and experience as evidenced by prevalidated designs and big-end of town partnerships themselves. The journey towards converged infrastructure is much safe and more secure when an enterprise has an appropriate, forward-thinking professional guide.

To find out more how Logicalis can help you transform your data centre, click here.

The 4-stage Approach to Adopting Cloud Solutions

Despite the general maturity, dependability and demonstrated utility of the cloud – the modern form of which has been around since about 2002, with the start of Amazon Web Services – some organisations appear to still have lingering doubts about storing data and cloud security.

These concerns are hangovers from the early days of cloud computing and are also fanned whenever their is a major data breach, whether or not the security of the cloud was a factor.

Of course, the big research houses, like Gartner, have few doubts about the cloud and its future. In a recent report (January 2015), Gartner forecast that the public cloud services market in the mature Asia Pacific and Japan region, is set to grow 14.2% in 2015, to total US$7.4 billion. They predict “consistent and stable cloud growth through to 2018”.

Fastest growing public cloud services

Gartner’s big picture view is that “Cloud management, storage and SaaS will be among the faster growing public cloud services through 2018, as more enterprise and government users jump onto cloud services”. And they’ve even broken down the popularity of the most popular different forms of cloud services up to 2018.

Gartner forecasts that:

• Business process-as-a-Service (BPaaS) cloud services will make up 9.2% of the overall public cloud services market in the Asia Pacific and Japan;

• Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) will represent 3% of the market;

• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) will be at 21.5%;

• Cloud management – security services will take up 4%;

• Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) will be at 9.8%, and;

• The remaining 52.5% will come from cloud advertising.

International IT solutions and managed services providers, like Logicalis, are experienced cloud services providers accustomed to answering a broad range of questions from clients relating to cloud computing.

Four stage approach to cloud adoption

In their experience, there is a common four-stage approach that can help ease the concerns of organisations and boost the confidence of their CIOs relating to storing data and running applications in the cloud.

1. Develop the Right Strategy

Consulting with the experts to develop the best strategy and plan for optimum use of cloud services is the first step. This process involves choosing a proven cloud strategy and properly accounting for the many compliance issues. It also should determine how to achieve the best return on investment, balancing capital and operational expenses. How to best use automation in this plan is another key consideration. The outcome should be a dependable service model based on the company’s budget and particular requirements.

2. Asses the Status Quo

A thorough understanding of the company’s IT structure, using a broad range of tools to inventory devices in the physical and virtual environments plus the application layer, is vital before making changes. Expert consultants can advise on which particular tools are best. This detailed process enables CIOs to determine whether systems are under-utilised or over-used, generating costly inefficiencies, and can point to issues such as any server sprawl.

3.  Examine Data Centre Conditions

Special attention should be given to the condition of the data centre facilities which house the virtual infrastructures. This will determine whether they are energy efficient and point to any overcrowding or overheating. Too often CIOs have data centres which are crammed full of devices, with limited awareness of whether they are turned on. A better strategy is to have a proactive approach to IT management instead of continually reacting to issues.

4.  Update Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity (BC) Plans

Familiarity with DR and BC can breed contempt in CIOs who do not regularly update their plans, instead relying on sending tapes off to a storage facility in the belief they are protected. A fresh look at the availability of mission critical data may find some surprises. Expert consultants can also advise on advances such as DRaaS (Disaster-recovery-as-a-Service) which has been shown to be able to recover data in hours, instead of days. Any initial cloud assessment should specifically consider DR and BC and re-evaluate currently available services.

Do your pre-cloud homework

So as demonstrated here, appropriate cloud adoption depends on doing the homework and planning. Any concerns about cloud adoption can be discussed with external experts who, no doubt, will have heard similar questions before.

The Cloud has matured to become a pivotal part of the 3rd platform, which includes big data and analytics, mobility and social media. Research House IDC believes the 3rd Platform “will forever change how control, management, and security of the IT environment, are delivered”.

To find out how Logicalis can support you with moving to the cloud, head to the Solutions & Services section.

Defining Service-led Transformation

Keeping up with the pace of change in technology and services is a challenge for many businesses today. Often core trends start in the consumer space before jumping to the enterprise, in a reversal of what went before.

This shift is what IDC defines as the “Third Platform”. It’s a solutions-focused world of cloud, mobility, big data analytics and social business, disrupting the current status quo of LAN/internet and client/server.

Crucially it’s a shift from infrastructure to services. Value is migrating up the “stack”, from infrastructure to platforms, from applications to data, to industry-specific solutions and communities.

Cloud is a huge driver and enabler of this. Cloud spending is predicted to grow 25% in 2014, reaching over $100 billion, with public clouds winning 75% more deals than private.

 

Shifts in service procurement

End-user demands and expectations are also changing, presenting a challenge for IT departments. Executives in other areas, such as marketing or sales, are increasingly identifying and procuring services that were once the domain of the IT department.

Just as these executives are accustomed to trying and buying apps for their personal smartphones, so they now buy tools for business productivity such as CRM, file sharing, social business and collaboration tools. They can contrast and compare the different services on offer, and mix and match them to arrive at the experience that best meets their needs.

It’s projected that between 2014 and 2017, IT spending by groups outside of IT departments will grow at over 6% a year, nearly 2.5 times the rate that IT department spend will grow. According IDC, 60% of CIOs believe their line-of-business colleagues will have more influence over IT spending in the next three years.

The result? IT departments will likely find themselves managing service providers rather than managing infrastructure or procuring hardware.

 

Service Defined Enterprise

Enterprises are demanding much more from IT. It has to cut costs while enabling business growth and faster time to market. These demands will see business leaders taking a much more active role in IT decisions.

According to a global study that Logicalis carried out into CIO pressures and priorities, interviewing 186 CIOs and IT managers across 24 countries the majority of CIOs are aligned with these goals. They want to reduce their organisation’s emphasis on running IT legacy systems and focus instead on delivering business transformation. Half of CIOs interviewed said they spend between 80-100% of their budget on running past investments.

No one wants to be stuck paying for the past. Modernising internal IT systems, processes and infrastructure increasingly means working externally with more service partners.

This will see organisations evolve into what Logicalis calls the “Service Defined Enterprise”. A Service Defined Enterprise focuses less on what IT systems it owns and more on which IT services it has access to.

A Service Defined Enterprise is a more agile enterprise, because it consumes the services it needs when it needs them, from the most efficient and appropriate source.

 

Focus on the End-user experience

The focus will be on the end user experience rather than the underlying technology that enables it. That’s now someone else’s problem. The IT department no longer needs to build and develop its own solutions. For example, instead of deploying mobile devices it will embrace BYOD and develop effective mobility policies and services. The mindset will be to (securely) enable, rather than to limit and control.

As we step onto the Third Platform, more and more new technologies and services will emerge. While not every emerging technology will significantly disrupt the business landscape, many traditional business models will be overturned. IDC predicts that by 2018, one-third of the top 20 market share leaders in most industries will be significantly disrupted by new competitors.

Choosing the right services and service partners will be critical for an organisation’s competitive edge, and CIOs will be instrumental in driving this.

Though their role in the new landscape will be different, it will be no less vital. Formerly the technology guardian, the CIO will become the internal enterprise service provider (IESP). It will be their job to perfectly align the needs and ambitions of a business with the technology and services required to fulfil them.

The IESP’s motto will be “externally first”: always looking to see if an external service provider can meet their needs before looking to build the service themselves.

Instead of managing technology, they will manage experiences and offer a well-defined service portfolio. They will need to be thought leaders and proactively investigate new service opportunities and possibilities. Their survival, and their organisation’s survival, will depend on embracing disruptive innovation and using it to transform their business.

To find out more about SDE click here.

 

How to overcome traditional data centre complexity

Time and time again, IT is challenged to provide critical services for organisations. These services include effective disaster recovery, data back up, restoration and operational management services, to name a few.
Traditional on-premise data centres are capable of performing these services. With the rise of cloud, however, issues with the traditional data centre model have become more prominent.

1. Coping with data explosion

Data is growing at an exponential rate. IDC predicts that by 2020, data objects will grow 67 times, and data will grow 44 times. Most businesses see continued data growth with each passing day, and struggle to keep up.

Traditional data centres were not built with growth in mind and were mostly bought to match an organisation’s requirement at a certain point in time. Gartner notes that many data centre managers make the mistake of basing their estimates on what they already have and extrapolating out future needs according to historical growth patterns.

With extreme data growth rates, back up and restoration windows grow too long. This eventually leads to broken infrastructure and missed SLAs, which results in the need for further back up and DR infrastructures.

2. Forklift upgrades

As organisations struggle to keep up with their data, they tend to choose a quick fix – adding another storage platform. This option may be quick but on closer examination, it is a sub-optimal solution to manage data explosion.

Adding another storage platform means you add another layer of infrastructure, with a different type of data storage method. Essentially, instead of having one point of storage and one method, you have two of everything. This results in increased management points and further complexity

3. Expensive add-ons

Traditional data centres were typically bought based on historical consumption needs, and generally do not scale efficiently. Data growth means the organisation will need to buy more compute power, storage platforms and servers, which, including the initial data centre investment, becomes even more expensive.

Additionally, organisations will need to employ more staff or ensure existing staff devote more time to managing the different methods and management points. Either through time or money, an organisation spends significant resources through this option.

4. Reactive vs. proactive IT

With this continued data growth come complexity in the form of additional management points and changes in infrastructure. It is therefore not uncommon for IT to spend most too much of their time navigating these complexities.

Through our work, we’ve found that IT departments typically spend 70% of their time managing incoming issues, or ‘keeping the lights on’, and only 30% on innovation. Gartner has also found that 80% – 90% of a typical company’s IT budget goes into ‘business as usual’, leaving only 10 – 20% to focus on work that directly contributes to achieving the business’ goals.

The Logicalis Virtual Private Data Centre (LVPDC) harnesses the cloud to host a data centre that eliminates these traditional challenges.

• The Logicalis VPDC is essentially Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). It scales efficiently, allowing businesses the agility to cope with data explosion. This takes away the complexities of scale, therefore making growth simple to manage.

• With cloud, you are generally creating a converged data centre, which run on less cables and can scale more linearly than a traditional data centre. Our LVPDC allows organisations to select the services needed from a pick-list, allowing them to scale according to their requirements. This removes the ineffectiveness of “forklift upgrades”.

• Cloud solutions enable smarter storage and smarter IT. The LVPDC leverages this, managing storage, data duplication, compression, back up and restoration more efficiently, and at a fraction of the cost of a traditional data centre. Through lower unit cost and less time, cloud delivers a more cost effective option to manage the rapid growth in data.

• Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is essential for businesses to ensure their data is protected and their business can run in unexpected circumstances. The LVPDC comes with integrated DR so that you can essentially insure your data. And with the data centre managed externally, IT is relieved of the daily burden to ‘keep the lights on’ and can rest assured that the data is protected. This will enable IT to focus more on innovative projects that will have a direct result on the business’ success.

• Despite the fact that cloud eliminates many traditional data centre issues, some organisations are still hesitant to make the move. This may be due to compliance, data sovereignty or latency issues. Logicalis has all data centre infrastructure hosted within Australia in Tier 3+ facilities to ensure your business’ critical data is safely stored. This is backed by ISO20000 accredited support and management processes.

Forbes puts it best in their statement, “business need fresh thinking about the architecture of tomorrow because merely rehabbing or adding on to the existing plan will simply not meet the wildly different and more-demanding requirements of tomorrow”. Cloud computing essentially presents a new opportunity for businesses to cope with tomorrow’s data explosion complexities.

To learn more, contact us now or visit our Cloud microsite for more information.