Five ways to treat
Branch Office IT like
your smartphone
By Wimpie van Rensburg, Country Manager Sub-Saharan
Africa, Riverbed Technology
W
ith the environment that businesses operate
in rapidly changing, finding new ways to be
competitive takes them on a new challenge.
No doubt, many will be looking to grow and
even consider international expansion, if
they haven’t started to already. One of the most effective
ways to grow is to open new branch offices.
Why branch IT should be more like your smartphone
Today’s smart devices are a perfect example of complex
services and applications being delivered to users who
don’t necessarily have to be extremely tech savvy. These
devices allow individuals to seamlessly access their data,
which is often stored in the cloud, from any location via
3G/4G networks, or Wi-Fi connections. All this without the
need for dedicated application servers, or expensive backup and storage devices.
Your branch offices and other remote sites don’t have to be
any different. With a zero-IT branch built on converged IT
infrastructure, it is possible to have 100% consolidation of
data and servers from remote sites into data centres, with
local performance and availability at the branch.
Drawing Similarities between Smartphones
1. Pure Simplicity: Just as how smartphones eliminate the
need for specialised servers, storage devices and security
technologies, so too does branch converged IT eliminate
the need for IT infrastructure to be deployed at the branch.
It allows IT teams to consolidate servers, storage and network infrastructure into a single appliance. This approach
greatly simplifies the maintenance and delivery of
critical resources.
2. Accelerated Deployment: The typical smartphone user
installs an average of 26 apps. This impressively high number can be largely attributed to the ease with which applications can be downloaded from mobile app stores, and the
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speed with which they can be installed and run. So to with a
converged branch IT solution, administrators can provision
and deploy new branch services and entire sites as quickly
and as easily as setting up virtual machines.
3. Stateless Ease: A decade ago, phone data was stored
locally on the device itself. This means that if an unfortunate
owner happened to lose the device, the data was also in
jeopardy. Fast forward to today when, at least from a continuity point of view, a smart device is conveniently replaceable. Data and accounts can be re-synced and everything
can be up and running just as before in a matter of minutes.
When IT is converged in the core data centre, applications
at the branch can be replaced and recovered with virtually
no data loss, as all of your critical information is centralised
in the data centre for 100% availability and
continuous operations.
4. That Syncing Feeling: Smartphones can leverage cloud
storage services such as Dropbox or Box to automatically
transfer data such as pictures, music and videos to the
cloud. If this data is then accidentally deleted from the device, it can be safely recovered from the online backup. In
a zero-IT branch, data is centralised at the data centre, and
can therefore be accessed as and when required. Manual
tape backups done on a local-level are costly, and frequently result in less effective disaster recovery capability as they
can be prone to errors. With a converged branch infrastructure, this problem doesn’t arise and backup windows shrink
from 24 hours to just a few minutes.
5. Improved Security: Smartphones offer a wide range of
security options that include passwords, security software,
and encryption. Consolidation protects your organisation’s
sensitive data by housing it where it belongs – in the secure
data centre. Data kept at the branch is limited only to active
data sets and measures can also be taken to ensure that
when data is stored in the branch, or in transit, it’s protected
with encryption and delivered securely using SSL.
So, by tapping into this smartphone analogy, today’s hybrid
enterprises will rethink the branch with Zero Branch IT.