Today, businesses know they need to be agile, mobile and fast – or even better, first – to respond to market challenges. They also understand the critical role that technology must play in making this possible.
As a result, IT departments are having to deliver on an ever-expanding wish-list of technology projects to back up business initiatives and link together different parts of the organisation. Desktop virtualisation, big data projects and cloud development are all seen as key targets in the battle to gain the competitive high ground.
However, a history of mergers, acquisitions and other changes in the organisational structure has left many companies with an inheritance of rigidity and high costs. A proliferation of servers, storage and network resources, as well as different management tools and processes, has resulted in numerous information silos being established across the organisation. And this siloed landscape hinders IT departments in their ability to drive efficiency improvements.
That’s why many organisations are now looking to implement unified platforms such as the Cisco-NetApp FlexPod solution. This provides companies with a shared infrastructure that can be centrally managed and easily scaled up using standardised ‘building blocks’. A bit like adding rooms of different sizes onto a house to meet the needs of the people living in it.
By establishing a unified platform, companies ensure that all business units are accessing the same data using the same tools in the same way. This eliminates data silos and helps to break down organisational barriers.
The simplified structure results in significant cost savings thanks to more efficient storage, lower energy consumption and reduced maintenance time. And, working from a single, unified architecture, IT departments can respond faster and more flexibly to meet changing business requirements – whether scaling up systems to support rapid growth or preparing for desktop virtualisation initiatives.
In our next blog, we’ll be looking at ways in which a uniform storage architecture can help companies reduce risk.
