Driving Value as a System Operator

In developing a solution to infrastructure issues, companies have been forced to build the expertise to execute the engineering and implementation internally. With the advent of Vblock Systems several years ago, VCE began to address this problem in a very real and cost-effective manner. Although system administrators will always need to internally run and manage their infrastructure to achieve their core IT charter – delivery of services – they don’t need to design the whole system on their own. Most organizations refresh or replace a system once every 3-5 years, but VCE engineers build and refresh solutions on a monthly basis. We take that risk out of the equation for our customers.

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein

Based on several recent studies from both IDC and 451 Group the understanding of converged infrastructure and its impact on the data center continues to evolve, with adoption levels that have fueled nearly 70% growth year over year from 2012 to 2013[1]; however, still about 21% of the market is even in the pilot project stages[2], this market is still in its infancy.  Growth in hardware deployment will not deliver the overall value unless there is also a fundamental change in the manner of which services are managed inside the data center.

Simply put, if data center resources are not realigned to take advantage of the engineering work that goes into a Vblock System before it leaves the factory, they are never going to recognize the long-term value.

Key features of a Vblock System that provide increased ROI are:

1. Standardization. Through the VCE experience, the engineering, design, build and test of a Vblock System provides high levels of assurance of both interoperability between all the components and reliability throughout the lifecycle.
2. Agility. Vblock Systems provide reliable and predictable delivery and performance metrics. This enables the operations team to focus on applications, not on engineering capacity.
3. Capacity Planning. The Vblock System can be managed as a resource in its entirety vs. managing its individual components. The tools that are provided as part of the Vblock System provide overall and individual health metrics that help manage capacity and performance, without having to build specific tools to provide KPI visibility.
4. Resource Optimization. By utilizing Vblock Systems, the in-house teams can focus on the delivery of services to the end consumer, not building or delivering capacity. A Vblock System is an engineered solution, which enables VCE to deliver highly reliable, highly scalable systems with short lead times.

Overall a Vblock System provides customers with fast, reliable builds and resilient, pre-engineered solutions that enable operations teams to focus on the delivering applications, not simply the hardware.

To full understand these benefits, a system operator must change his or her IT organizational mindset. Rather than engineering and implementing new solutions, a system operator must focus on managing hardware and capacity issues and delivering application availability and performance. IT’s true value stems from delivering applications, not the development of intellectual capital related to the engineering hardware systems. IT departments must refocus their IT hardware and staff investments to deliver the best value. And that value can only be experienced with highly available services.

With a Vblock System, the organization needs to make an upfront investment in the operational management. The VCE Vision™ Intelligent Operations software is key to providing a single pane of glass through which the overall health of the system can be managed. This allows a single team to handle not just a handful of systems, but a stable full. This quickly translates into increased application availability, scaling and overall user satisfaction. Therefore, by providing a pre-engineered solution through the VCE experience, enterprises are able to focus on the delivery and availability of applications, driving real value into the enterprise.

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