Small to medium businesses (SMBs) are faced with an increasingly complex technology landscape that changes so quickly that it’s hard to keep up. Constantly buying new specialised hardware just isn’t viable anymore. It’s too costly, too disruptive and just doesn’t make sense, so we need a more intelligent solution.
This is where Software Defined Infrastructure comes in. Software Defined Infrastructure lets us use standard, off-the-shelf hardware and create a variety of technology functions using the software instead. What this means is we can have one box that performs multiple tasks, decreasing cost and reducing complexity, which are both huge benefits for the SMB.
Everything in one
The basic concept is similar to a smartphone – you have this incredibly powerful but standard hardware device and all of the features and functionality are delivered by the applications (apps) you install on it. You can choose which apps you want depending on what you need your phone to do.
The same holds true for Software Defined Infrastructure. A single Software Defined Infrastructure appliance can take on the task of a multitude of different IT functions, depending on what your business needs. This includes storage, backup, de-duplication, replication and redundancy, Disaster Recovery (DR), server virtualisation, network switches and Wide Area Network (WAN) optimisation, amongst others.
Aside from delivering multiple functions in a single, standardised hardware platform, Software Defined Infrastructure offers SMBs access to enterprise-class services. Software Defined Infrastructure combines IT infrastructure, advanced data services and Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven operations into a single, integrated hyperconverged solution at a fraction of traditional offerings’ costs.
This means SMBs can now compete with big businesses because they can use the same technology solutions and unlock more value in their infrastructure. The management layer is also drastically simplified, because you no longer have five different solutions which requires five different sets of skills to manage in order to perform five different functions.
This also saves costs in a number of ways. Not only is it cheaper to have one piece of hardware instead of five, you don’t need to use as much electricity to power it or cool it – which of course translates into a smaller generator required, which is an increasing consideration in the South African market. It’s far easier to maintain and it simplifies matters so much that you don’t even need specialist skills to maintain it. It can be setup and be up and running in a matter of minutes, backups can be run as frequently as needed because they don’t impact on performance, and recovery of data can be done in as little as 60 seconds.
Minimise the risks – choose the right partner
As always when you introduce a completely new technology to your business, there are some risks involved. If you get it wrong, the consequences could be disastrous, and the reality is that as amazing as Software Defined Infrastructure is, it’s not the right solution for every business.
That’s why it’s incredibly important to choose the right partner to guide you on your journey. A trusted partner will help you to firstly define your needs and secondly choose the most appropriate solution to help you address these needs. They will also walk the journey with you during implementation to ensure that things go smoothly, and they will support you afterwards to make sure it keeps running that way.
HPE Software Defined Infrastructure solutions automate IT operations and streamline management of resources, workloads, and apps by deploying and controlling data centre infrastructure as code. These solutions will provide enterprises with a simpler, faster and more efficient platform that operates with little human intervention and enables them to develop and deploy apps faster.
For SMBs with limited IT resources and limited internal skills, a trusted partner is invaluable in helping you to leverage technology for maximum benefit to your organisation.
Stephan Steyn
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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StephanSteyn1
My career has enabled me to gain skills and expertise in virtualization, storage and networking across multiple vendor brands and I have a special interest in anything that can simplify life, such as IoT. My career highlights include the transition from break fix repairs to server and storage specialist and from there on virtualization specialist.
