It is almost a given in today’s world that for almost any organization to operate at peak efficiency and achieve optimal results that it has to acquire and use multiple forms of technology as part of its business processes. However what is not always so clear is the forces that are at work both insider and outside of the business that drive its technology acquisitions. While by no means a complete list, here are four (4) forces that DCIG often sees at work behind the scenes that influence and drive many of today’s technology infrastructure buying decisions.
- Keep Everything (All Data). Many organizations often start with the best of intentions when it comes to reigning in data growth by deleting their aging or unwanted data. Then reality sets as they consider the cost and time associated with managing this data in an optimal manner. At that point, they often find it easier, simpler, less risky and most cost effective to just keeping the date.
New technologies heavily contribute to them arriving at this decision. Data compression and data deduplication minimize or eliminate redundant data. Ever higher capacity hard disk drives (HDDs) facilitate storing more data in the same data center footprint. The combination of these technologies amplify the benefits of the other. Further, with IT staffing levels staying flat or even dropping in many organizations, no one has the time to manage the data or wants to risk deleting data that is later deemed needed.
- Virtualize Everything. An initial motivation for many organizations to virtualize many applications in the data center was to eliminate both capital and operational expenditures. While those reasons persist, organizations now recognize that virtualizing everything pays many other dividends as well. These include faster applications recoveries; better access to copies of production data; eliminating backup windows; and, new opportunities for testing and developing existing and new applications.
- Instant Recovery. Almost all users within organizations expect continuous availability from all of their applications regardless of the tier of application within an organization. However instant recovery is a realistic expectation on the part of most end-users. By virtualizing applications, r using data protection solutions that offer continuous data protection for applications that reside on physical machines, or clustering software, applications that cannot be recovered in seconds or minutes should be in the process of becoming the exception rather than the rule.
- Real Time Analytics and Performance. As is evidenced by the prior three points, organizations have more data than ever before at their fingertips and should be able to make better decisions in real time using that data. While this force is still in the early vestiges of becoming a reality, DCIG sees more evidence of this happening all of the time thanks in large part to the growing adoption of open source computing, the use of commodity or inexpensive hardware for mission critical processing and the growing availability of software that can leverage these resources and deliver on these new business requirements.
Technology infrastructure buying decisions are never easy and always have some risk associated with them but if organizations are to remain at peak efficiency and competitive, not having the right technologies is NOT an option. By understanding these seen and unseen forces that are often at work behind the scenes can help organizations better understand and prioritize which technologies they should buy as well as help to quantify the business benefits they should to expect to see after acquiring them and putting them in place.