You’ve probably heard it a million times, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Sure, it makes a lot of sense – keep moving forward in the same way, approach IT strategy in the same way, and you’ll get the same results.
The problem is that while you are chugging along in your perfectly sufficient infrastructure, churning out the same results, your competitors are honing their craft and evolving their infrastructure to drive a competitive edge. Before you know it, the “same results” you were once getting could turn into questions about why and how IT is having a negative impact on business outcomes.
The role of IT has changed. Business begin to expect data and IT infrastructure to drive business opportunities. So, my advice is… if it’s not broke, still figure out a way to improve it!
If it’s not broke, improve it!
As you consider how to evolve your infrastructure toward competitive advantage, here are the top 5 considerations for your IT strategy that I touched on during a recent EcoCast webinar:
1. Map Out Your Data Strategy:
Before you make any changes to your infrastructure, ensure you have mapped out a clear data strategy. In other words, know what data you have, how you plan to leverage it, and which applications will enable you to do so. By the way, they will need to talk to one another.
2. Align the Cost of Storage with the Value of Data:
Storing system hardware logs on primary storage makes as much economic sense as housing your transaction databases on 5400 RPM hard disks. You’ll gain much faster insight from databases using NVMe™ (if that still sounds foreign to you – read our guide) and save cash by parking your secondary data somewhere else – expansion shelves, high capacity drives and/or object storage systems. Spend the big bucks on the high value data and invest the cost savings elsewhere when storing secondary data. Remember you want faster insights and a competitive advantage. Just make sure you’re getting data off tape so you can actually mine it.
3. Agility and Scalability are Essential:
If you ever needed proof that business today runs at light speed, just look at all your network infrastructure. You need to make decisions fast; you need to turn on the proverbial dime; you need to able to change course and scale in an instant. Don’t let your competition prove you wrong.
Don’t let your competition prove you wrong.
4. Create a “Future-Proof” Infrastructure:
Yes, I know what today’s infrastructure looks like, but don’t forget it was the “future” only a few years ago. As technologies continue to evolve, you want to have the opportunity to take full advantage without having to rip-and-replace your business. Achieving a software composable infrastructure, or a composable disaggregated infrastructure, empowers you to choose your environments – virtual, containers, bare-metal, etc. – while providing the flexibility to continuously remain current, efficient and agile as future needs and innovations arise.
5. Ensure Data is Accessible Across Multiple Compute Resources:
To enable real-time actionable insights, data must be accessible regardless of where it is captured or accessed. Deploying the right network – or fabric – is key in ensuring that data is available to any compute resource, and NVMe-oF™ proffers reduced I/O bottlenecks within storage arrays and across networks. NVMe-oF was a key topic during the Ecocast and in my recent blog. When creating a composable, “future-proof” infrastructure, NVMe-oF is going to be a critical component to ensure the speed and performance necessary to drive competitive advantage. Make sure you understand what it is and how to use it.
6. Does Your IT Strategy Need Improvement? Helpful Resources
Whether it’s mapping out your data strategy or identifying solutions that can ensure you are driving a competitive advantage through your IT infrastructure, our experts are here to help you drive a better IT strategy. From silicon to systems, we have you covered.
Here are some helpful resources to get started with:
• Understand what is NVMe-oF and how it may impact your infrastructure.
• Aligning data value with cost of storage: Read this IntelliFlash Storage Arrays Tech Brief.
• The role of Composable Infrastructure – Watch this EcoCast webinar replay: “Converged, Hyperconverged and Composable Infrastructure”
• Want to get an expert on board? Contact us here.