Tag: hyperconvergence

18 Feb

Hyperconverged tech investment set to rise

Share this :-
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hyperconverged Infrastructure, or HCI, is an IT framework that combines all the elements of a traditional data center, such as storage, computing and networking, into one unified system.

Source: SPGGlobal
By Anser Haider

Investment in hyperconverged infrastructure is set to boom this year as companies that had already invested in the technology realize the potential for the blended IT model to modernize their workloads, according to a survey conducted by 451 Research, a unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Hyperconverged Infrastructure, or HCI, is an IT framework that combines all the elements of a traditional data center, such as storage, computing and networking, into one unified system. Dell Technologies Inc., VMware Inc. and Nutanix Inc. are among the major IT vendors that offer HCI platforms to organizations seeking to reduce the operational complexity inherent in traditional, stand-alone infrastructure. A rising number of companies are turning to HCI to deploy and simplify the notoriously complex virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) platforms that are used for remote work, for example.

451’s “Voice of the Enterprise: Hyperconverged Infrastructure: Technology & Platform Innovation 2020” survey, which published in late December, found that HCI adoption sits at about 35% of the overall IT market, but a significant percentage of customers are testing the platforms or plan to adopt them in the near future. Meanwhile, organizations currently using HCI — whether in production or as a proof of concept — plan to increase their HCI budgets by an average of 50% in 2021 compared to 2020.

Christian Perry, a senior research analyst covering IT infrastructure at 451 Research and the author of the survey report, said that there is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic was a tremendous driver for HCI tech.

“As organizations scrambled to outfit their businesses for remote work, some of them found that they can be up and running quickly with HCI,” Perry said. “Deployments of that technology can be very complex, but HCI makes the process far easier.”

Some government agencies wound up adopting HCI in 2020 in response to the pandemic, Perry said. Police departments, for example, turned to the technology to digitally track various uprisings and protests in the past year, he said.

“Once HCI is within an IT ecosystem, it tends to expand like wildfire, mostly because the experience is very positive and not tremendously different from a standard virtualization server experience,” Perry said.

HCI investment is often strategically deployed for specific IT initiatives and projects. Thirty-six percent of surveyed organizations cited new IT initiatives and/or project requirements as the primary reason for increased HCI investment, whereas 15% of organizations said the investments were part of a broad infrastructure refresh.

“The survey results support the point that HCI budgets are now designed for organizations to expand their HCI footprints to support the convergence of IT and critical businesses,” Perry said.

Enterprises choose their HCI platforms based on factors including scaling, networking and hybrid cloud capabilities. Ease of scaling — or the ability to add compute or storage capacity without downtime — is the leading feature that drives HCI platform selection, with 50% of surveyed organizations identifying it as important. This became especially important in 2020 when organizations were forced to speed up their digital transformation efforts amid the pandemic, Perry said.

Other important technology features on the radar for HCI platform selection are networking (43%) and hybrid cloud workload mobility to public and/or private clouds (42%).

The study also found that HCI is not necessarily the power-efficient infrastructure that customers expect. Although some IT teams say HCI saves power compared with stand-alone, three-tier infrastructure, 41% of adopters say that HCI has actually increased their data center power requirements to date. Meanwhile, 31% say it has decreased power requirements, and 28% say it has had no effect.

“While everything else about HCI is very efficient, we found that power requirements can actually increase due to the far denser, fully virtualized servers,” Perry said. “However, that’s a good thing, because it means the technology is functioning properly and the customers are getting their money’s worth, even if they have to deal with greater electricity and cooling platforms.”

Perry said that once organizations get more accustomed to their HCI platforms, they are able to more easily optimize and manage the power requirements.

15 Feb

Capitalizing on important technology trends of 2022

Share this :-
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Source: IT Web

Where OT managers and IT managers previously might not necessarily have had to sit around the same table, this hyperconvergence together with trends like robotics now necessitates close collaboration between IT and operational technology.

Over the course of the last two years, companies of all sizes have had to invest in the acceleration of their digital transformation as a result of the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, coupled with the need to respond to the demands of hybrid working thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic and lockdown measures put in place to help curb its spread.

This fast pace of digital adoption is set to continue during 2022. Morné Laubscher, Chief Technology Officer at global IT solutions and managed service provider, Logicalis South Africa, unpacks some of the most prevalent technology trends that will help business leaders drive productivity, enhanced decision-making and higher levels of success in 2022.

Weaving the fabric of continued business success

Data literacy within private and public organisations is of the utmost importance during 2022 and beyond, as leaders historically had to understand only the finances to manage their business. But these days, you need data savvy leaders that can comprehend all the systems and all the outputs of the business, so they’re able to quickly pivot and make decisions that impact the organisation – its offerings, it’s engagement with its staff, engagement with its market or clientele in a very dynamic manner.

While the big corporates with the bigger budgets certainly invest in big data platforms and analytics tools, mid-market organisations and even SMEs that don’t necessarily have these big budgets also have the ability to drive access to those insights across structured and unstructured data, irrespective of its location inside the organisation or the platform that it resides on.

And there are really trend-setting innovative platforms out there that do this, including Microsoft Synapse, which is an interesting new approach to data and data warehouse management across a heterogeneous ecosystem.

Keeping corporate data secure and sensitive data private

The adoption of digital technologies has been exponential in the market, but with that comes a responsibility to make sure that we are able to transact in a secure manner. Data privacy is a big concern for a lot of organisations because having access to platforms across any connectivity medium creates a challenge: how do you govern their access to that data? With the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act now having become a real concern in South Africa, it’s become also quite locally relevant, so security and data governance is sort of a bundle deal.

With regards to this, one of the biggest security pitfalls in cloud and cloud technologies is misconfiguration. Data platforms are so complex and have so many features that companies are quick to adopt, but it takes a certain core skill in order to properly run and manage these platforms in a secure manner. So, it’s not malicious intent from my external party that creates an exploit or some sort of risk in the business, but simply that there’s a system that came with security features; however, these security features weren’t configured.

To address this, companies can ensure that these fairly complex environments are secure through security operations centre (SOC) service. Consequently, Logicalis invested heavily in a fully resourced security socket within South Africa, and we have a co-delivery model with our colleagues in Jersey, so it’s also not a standalone SOC. So, this results in the capability to drive intelligence on the environment, doing the log ingestion, understanding what all the systems and platforms and technologies in the environment look like, whether they are secure and then adding to that the security, automation and orchestration component. One of the big SIEM/SOAR platforms that we focus on is Microsoft Sentinel, which allows for automation to significantly cut down on remediation times and costs of the service. It’s quite efficient.

When IT met OT for a hyperconvergence rendezvous

In the fourth industrial era, internet of things is increasingly and quickly becoming part of the set-up on factory floors, in manufacturing facilities, as well as within buildings for remote monitoring purposes. Where OT managers and IT managers previously might not necessarily have had to sit around the same table, this hyperconvergence together with trends like robotics now necessitates close collaboration between IT and operational technology.

Ultimately, 2021 brought a lot of challenges to companies, including the need to rapidly transform digitally to enable hybrid working, and 2022 will continue to introduce challenges and market opportunities. Organisations simply need to capitalise on technological trends like these mentioned above in order to take these opportunities up and address any challenges experience throughout the course of the year.

13 Feb

Potential Opportunity Worth US$80 Billion Opening Up in Cloud Computing

Share this :-
Reading Time: 3 minutes

The global cloud computing market is expected to be valued at US$947 Bn by 2026, owing to the increased adoption of hybrid cloud services, increased emphasis on multi-cloud strategy, and shift of enterprises toward the adoption of digital transformation and accelerating customer experience.

Source: Big News Network

Disruption – With the advent of Hyperconvergence infrastructure, Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service, the Rise of Containers, and the use of AI in cloud and data center is creating a potential opportunity worth US$80 Billion. The global cloud computing market is expected to be valued at US$947 Billion by 2026, owing to the increased adoption of hybrid cloud services, increased emphasis on multi-cloud strategy, and shift of enterprises toward the adoption of digital transformation and accelerating customer experience. By 2025, 70% of enterprise workloads will be running on the cloud infrastructure.

According to MarketsandMarkets analysis,

  • The cloud computing market is estimated to grow at a healthy CAGR of 16-17% in the coming 5 years, driven by the rising focus on delivering customer-centric applications for driving customer satisfaction.
  • North America, Europe, and APAC are expected to be the leading regions in terms of cloud computing adoption, innovation, and development.
  • There is ~USD 950 Bn potential within cloud computing service models, more than half of which is contributed by Software-as-a-Service.
  • MHealth, Internet of Medical Things, and remote patient monitoring are driving the growth of cloud computing opportunities in healthcare.

Currently, businesses have low access to primary intelligence to clarify some unknowns and adjacencies in these opportunity areas –

  • Storage automation technologies and usage of AI for storing and managing data in cloud. Blockchain storage structures are being used for cloud storage. Cloud storage will be in demand for storing real-time data feed from sensors and surveillance, medical imaging, data generated from wearables, autonomous vehicle, and V2V communication.
  • As businesses transitioned from office to remote operations, demand for remote desktop infrastructure and SaaS-based applications, Office 365, G Suite, Dropbox, Slack, Zoom, Salesforce CRM, and other business continuity and disaster recovery solutions surged.
  • Rise in demand for cloud-based collaboration and business continuity tools and services to support remote workforce. Surge in demand for Container platforms for application dev/dep, smart contract applications on cloud environment.
  • Emerging use cases – frictionless check-out, conversational AI, virtual fitting room to manage retail operations, with minimal human intervention. Companies are increasingly embracing AI and blockchain-based technologies to fight fraud and identity thefts.
  • As the effect of the pandemic in April 2020, IBM lowered its prices on bare metal servers across the globe and included up to 20TB of bandwidth with new competitive prices.

Some of the growth problems encountered by cloud computing companies are:

Customer prioritization and assessing unmet needs:

  • Identify emerging customer preference trends for cloud applications and identify current gaps in market.
  • What are the disruptions in our clients’ businesses? How can we support them for our own growth?
  • What are the prominent use cases that would drive the cloud computing market in the next 5 years?
  • What are the key unmet needs of customers? Who are the key stakeholders in different settings? Do vendor selection criteria differ by settings? Which new product features should be added to the existing products?

Where to play:

  • Which service model should we focus on? Should it be SaaS, PaaS or IaaS? What are the emerging use cases in the cloud computing ecosystem?
  • Which regions should we place our bets on? What are the regional specific trends and developments that are shaping the adoption of cloud applications?
  • What are the key trends that will shape the cloud computing market in the future?

Building a compelling Right-to-Win (RTW):

  • For M&A, which are the right targets for us? Should we target solution providers or service providers? Should we enter new markets directly or through partners?
  • How can we differentiate from top players? What is their right-to-win vs ours?

Key uncertainties/perspectives which industry leaders seek answers to:

For cloud computing companies:

  • What application areas will be relevant and redundant in the next 5 years?
  • How does the architectural framework/business model/value chain of the edge computing market look like over the coming year?
  • What are the key differentiators/features we can add in our products to make more lucrative to our customers?
  • How can companies optimize the manufacturing processes to be more agile and efficient to achieve a more seamless workflow?
  • What regulatory policies can help strategize and achieve volumetric scale-up?
  • Which region is the largest in terms of market opportunities now and in the future?

For Companies in Adjacent markets:

  • What application areas will be relevant and redundant in the next 5 years?
  • How does the architectural framework/business model/value chain of the edge computing market look like over the coming year?
  • What are the key differentiators/features we can add in our products to make more lucrative to our customers?
  • How can companies optimize the manufacturing processes to be more agile and efficient to achieve a more seamless workflow?
  • What regulatory policies can help strategize and achieve volumetric scale-up?
  • Which region is the largest in terms of market opportunities now and in the future?

Therefore, MarketsandMarkets research and analysis focuses on high-growth markets and emerging technologies, which will become ~80% of the revenues of cloud computing players from the ecosystem in the next 5–10 years. It helps find blind spots in clients’ revenue decisions because of interconnections and unknowns that impacting clients and their client’s clients.