Converging Data Center Infrastructure: Why, How and so What?

WHITE P APER Converging the Datacenter Infrastructure: Why, How, So What?

Sponsored by: VCE Richard L. Villars Jed Scaramella May 2012

www.idc.com

Randy Perry

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

One of the key strategies that IT teams are pursuing to reduce capital costs while boosting asset utilization and employee productivity is the transition to highly virtualized datacenters. However, IDC finds that after impressive initial productivity boosts, continuing results often do not meet expectations for further improvements in IT asset use and operational efficiency. This lag occurs because of overloaded storage and data network facilities, overprovisioning of storage capacity, and sharply increased administration workloads. In combination, these problems can severely limit benefits as the scope of virtual server deployments expands. As companies face a future in which they will need to deploy and effectively use hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of server (and/or desktop) application instances in a virtual environment, they should consider deploying optimally (e.g., densest, greenest, simplest) configured converged infrastructure systems (server, storage, network) that are managed as unified IT assets. Our research with five companies that have implemented Vblock Infrastructure Platforms from VCE indicated substantial business benefits associated with IT convergence and improved asset sharing. The results also showed reduced IT costs per unit of workload, faster deployment, and reduced downtime. These organizations reported reducing calendar time for deployment of new infrastructure from five weeks to one week and reducing staff time to configure/test/deploy by 75%. They indicated that, compared with their prior IT environment, the new infrastructure led to reductions in infrastructure hardware costs and IT staff time to manage operations that lowered the average annual datacenter cost by 68% per 100 users. VCE develops a range of platforms and solutions for...