Embrace Convergence

Every ten to fifteen years, a tectonic shift erupts to re-shape IT.

Moving from mainframes to client/server and to Internet computing altered the way you purchase, build, consume, and deliver your technology.

Now, once again, the landscape is shifting as we see the rise of mobility, social networking, Big Data, and cloud computing. Two-thirds of the workforce will soon own smartphones, and 40% will be mobile1 thus adding to the management complexity with the BYOD (bring your own device) phenomenon.

Big Data raises questions as to how IT will be able to manage structured and unstructured data sets too large to process using traditional data processing applications. Add to this picture an unpredictable global economy, scaled-back IT resources, aging infrastructures, and a growing pressure to deliver results instantly, and it’s easy to see IT is at a critical juncture.

Many IT professionals are coming to the realization that their legacy architectures just can’t accommodate new business demands such as the support of new cloud delivery models or the taming the explosion in human information. Eager to transform their data center operations, organizations have launched virtualization and cloud projects.

These initiatives have delivered many of the promised benefits such as improved service delivery and application workload handling. However, there have also been a few downsides such as increased management complexity and in many cases, higher operational costs. Virtualizing servers using various hypervisors, for example, has been shown to increase management overhead and create virtual sprawl.