Data Center Transformation: Stepping Back To Move Forward

IT is struggling to meet the needs of employees who want to work anytime, from anywhere, through a variety of endpoints. Increasing user requirements, computing trends and new technologies are also driving the need for enterprises around the globe to take a hard look at their IT infrastructures. There are the mounting pressures to cut data center costs, while still ensuring the reliability and security of the key corporate data and applications that run the business. It's time to take inventory of those systems that work and fix those that don't in order to tackle existing requirements and prepare for future challenges.

CHALLENGES OF INCREASING NETWORK TRAFFIC

Whether it be from increased use of mobile devices that often aren't owned or controlled by the company, the adoption of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), business units outsourcing their own IT requirements to Cloud providers or other changes, the global trend is moving applications and data farther away from their users. Not only does this increase the amount of network traffic that IT must worry about, it also has significant implications on the performance, security, manageability and availability of applications and data.

IT departments have typically responded to performance concerns by pushing more infrastructure out into remote offices, in an attempt to improve application response times and availability. Yet, they have also felt the negative implications of these moves on cost containment, security and manageability. As a result, IT leaders are reconsidering these distributed service architectures and seeking to restructure their IT resources to better deliver applications andservices to users, while still being able to meet their own data center goals. 

CONFLICTING REQUIREMENTS

One of the top challenges enterprises experience when taking on data center transformation initiatives is dealing with conflicting requirements that underscore an inherent difference in the way IT and users view technology. Users want anytime, anywhere, high-performance access to applications and data, which stands in stark contrast to IT's goals of security, reliability and cost containment.

TRANSFORM TO IMPROVE

With a focus on the five goals below, IT leaders can respond to changes in the business while optimizing data center operations.

Enhancement of application performance:Users routinely complain that slow applications inhibit their ability to get work done.

This is because applications are performing poorly, downtime is required for upgrades and maintenance, and/or non-business-critical traffic is having a negative impact..

Consolidation of branch servers: Branch office server refreshes can be particularly costly, since on-site IT talent is scarce and engineers must travel to many remote locations. By moving most of the applications deployed at branch locations back to the data center, IT departments can greatly simplify their remote operations and reduce the cost of remote IT support.

Protection of critical data: Data hosted in branch locations is subject to security breaches, local compliance regulations and insufficient backup and recovery operations. By bringing branch data back to the data center, IT departments can better safeguard crucial corporate information, and enterprises aren't forced to grapple with myriad local data regulations and compliance requirements.

Consolidation of data centers: Multiple data centers have become the norm as organizations expand their operations. For IT departments, this trend has led to increased costs and bigger management headaches. However, nearly one-third of the IDG survey respondents from around the globe say they are already conducting data center consolidation projects, and 21 percent say they plan to launch such projects over the next 12 months.

Manage performance: Improving application performance means IT first must understand the hurdles preventing better service. Modern technology such as virtualization can create blind spots, and the impact of infrastructure changes isn't always predictable. IT departments need new tools to monitor and troubleshoot network and application performance that provide insight into real end-user experience, individual transactions and network and infrastructure performance.

CONCLUSION

IT leaders increasingly need to change their data centers on a large scale to increase user productivity, adapt to ever-changing business needs and save costs. They need to rethink where to place IT resources to take advantage of the latest innovations and to prepare for future demands. With latest developments in data center transformation solutions, enterprises can cut the costs of operating their IT infrastructure while gaining better visibility into how their applications are performing, and maximize IT service speed and availability to end users.