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Today’s computing environment is far more complex than it used to be. For example, it’s mobile and social: Work is done anywhere and everywhere, on all sorts of devices.
Workloads that were static and constant are now dynamic and unpredictable. Public clouds, private clouds, and hybrid IT offer new solutions that support a wide range of applications and manage ever-growing volumes of data.
In other words, computing has become a fluid activity. And it requires a flexible, agile IT infrastructure...
But The Old Storage Model Ties Our Hands
In its most simplified form, computing infrastructure is like a three-tiered stack—with servers at the top, a network in the middle, and storage on the bottom.
On top, servers run our business applications. Through virtualization—the partitioning of a single server to act like multiple servers—this layer has become highly adaptable. Servers can change with our business, reconfiguring in seconds to support new applications and changing workloads.
At the center of the infrastructure, we have a network, which connects the other pieces. Networks have evolved to be extremely flexible and non-disruptive—you now never need rip out an old one to put in a new one. Even while adding network capacity or replacing components, we never expect the process to affect our applications or organization.
But then there’s storage—the foundation level of IT architecture. Until very recently, any change to storage has been disruptive, whether adding new storage, replacing existing storage, or performing maintenance.
This makes little sense. Why have these dynamic server and network layers if every time you need to upgrade storage, it negatively impacts productivity?
That’s Finally Starting To Change
We’re starting to see new, modular storage platforms that offer automated management, non-disruptive operation, and seamless data growth. This means you can now build all three tiers to have the same level of flexibility and agility—the same capability to quickly scale up or scale out.
This isn’t just a good idea: It’s fundamental to how we should build IT infrastructures for the future.
From a business perspective, this storage evolution transforms the way we purchase IT infrastructure. Instead of forecasting for future growth, we can buy exactly what we need today.
Need More Capacity As You Expand? Just Add It
Service providers have been doing this for years. Because their survival requires system-wide flexibility and reliability, enterprise-level service providers always base their IT design on the physical infrastructure.
This may not exactly sound groundbreaking, but most corporations or businesses do it differently. They tend to start with a specific application and then build the very best infrastructure possible for that one application.
Of course, the business soon needs another application. So they build another infrastructure. And a third. And, yes, a fourth. And a fifth...
They build a series of silos for each application!
But Take A Step Back
Your business doesn’t need the best infrastructure for each individual application. Instead, it needs an infrastructure that’s “good enough” for all its applications.
It may sound strange, but that’s what successful businesses are really looking for: an infrastructure that’s good enough.
Why? Because if we, as leaders or managers, are making IT decisions based on criteria such as speed, and then it turns out we only use a fraction of the available performance, we’ve over-invested.
Instead, we should aggregate our requirements across all our applications. For example:
- We need a system that’s fast enough, but not too expensive.
- We need a system that’s secure enough, but not so secure that it hampers users.
With the many options available today, proficient IT decisions come down to a convergence of performance, availability, capacity, and protection.
The Bottom Line
This is how service providers deliver reliable, secure functionality at a low cost. And so can you.
Ultimately, IT departments should move away from being builders and operators of costly datacenters, and evolve into true, business-enabling service brokers, to support tomorrow’s business.
What's your take? Weigh in with a comment below, and follow Matt Watts (Google+) @mtjwatts (Twitter).
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