How a modern IT infrastructure can work for you, without you!

In recent years, the idea of modernization of IT has pivoted from updating legacy systems to completely reimagining the role of technology in businesses. This shift and the opportunities that digital transformation brings to enterprises of any size are made possible by the advancements in every area of IT infrastructure, including computing, storage, networking, orchestration software. Now comes the point when we examine the new challenges we are facing due to this fundamental change.

To have a quick overview of the latest, we can imagine what is needed to support a “smart city” in terms of applications. Or the efforts needed to run predictive healthcare algorithms and optimize public health systems or hospital operations.

Decision-makers are already asking for less complexity in IT, more reliability and flexibility, and a high level of scaling to support modern applications. In Dell Technologies, we are ready to support these requirements, offering next-generation infrastructure solutions.

We are not talking about higher performance or scale-out characteristics, but autonomous operations. Few such products have impressed me so much as Dell EMC PowerOne autonomous infrastructure modular units. I can’t stress enough, how important this platform is for the advancement of automated systems that make deploying, managing, and consuming IT easier than ever.

The first significant advantage of PowerOne is the way it combines several systems – compute, storage, networking, and VMware virtualization software, into a single system. Built-in intelligence automates thousands of steps that would have to be taken manually otherwise. Data protection and system management software are integral components of PowerOne.

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Why is this different than a traditional IT infrastructure?

The binding element of all these subsystems is code – the single system-level API, which gives users total control over the infrastructure. Customers can create their own business objective-specific pools of resources, re-allocate them according to their needs, without disrupting ongoing operations. Several software “Assists” accelerate and streamline routine operations. For example, Launch Assist reduces installation and configuration time. It applies built-in workflows based on VMware Validated Designs and Dell EMC best practices, thus automating the initialization of hardware and virtual systems.

During operation, on the other hand, Lifecycle Assist simplifies daily tasks. It can manage the life cycle, continually checking the correct hardware and firmware settings, and as a result, highly reduces risks and manual interventions. When an upgrade or expansion of the system is required, Expansion Assist kicks in. It helps in adding, removing, or reassigning storage capacity, computational and networking resources through automated provisioning and scaling features. This approach maintains and streamlines IT operations, while covering the need to support new applications and services, without disrupting running tasks.

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Reducing complexity

Organizations in every sector yield very tangible and obvious benefits from this autonomous systems for modernizing their IT infrastructure. Investing in this type of infrastructure can save millions, compared with maintaining legacy systems that are unable to keep up with their evolving business demands.

Apart from financial gains, this type of modern solutions is extremely important for companies that develop state-of-the-art products and solutions.

We are foreseeing several applications that require this type of infrastructure in their business models. Moving from traditional IT, by embracing the flexibility of public clouds operations needs this type of autonomous infrastructures, that can provide the benefits and functionality of public clouds to on-premises systems.

A greater level of automation is required

This significant shift, in the way we are provisioning IT resources, does not only affect solutions like PowerOne. It affects the way we are building every modern infrastructure solution.

Our recent launch of Dell EMC PowerStore is a great example. PowerStore – our latest storage platform, precisely engineered and designed with the modern data center in mind, caters to the above described intelligent automation and adaptable architecture features. PowerStore is exceptionally versatile and powerful. It makes deployment of apps, migration, and routine storage operations, like data deduplication and compression, easier than ever, since all these operations are entirely automated.

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Innovation is more accessible than ever

While automation and autonomous operations seem to respond well to the needs of IT departments, the most critical aspect is found elsewhere – the value that brings to a business. Modern infrastructure solutions enable companies to innovate faster, support automation according to their priorities, and redesign their operations around their innovation. With the maturity of data analytics, business intelligence, and AI applications, technology innovation is more accessible and practically usable. There is a vast opportunity, for sectors from healthcare, to robotics, from novel edge-computing solutions to traditional R&D functions, to benefit from the intelligent and autonomous infrastructure.

In Dell Technologies, we are joining forces with our talented partner ecosystem. Today, we can deliver everything required, to launch your business forward!

About the Author: Valentin Stanescu