Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 28 | Page 67

t cht lk TECH TALK /////////////////////////////////////////////////// HCI CAUSING A STIR IN THE ENTERPRISE Ricky Pereira, Dell Enterprise Business Unit Manager at Pinnacle, looks at the benefits of hyper-converged infrastructure and what VxRail brings to the market. S mart organisations are realising the benefits of hyper-converged infrastructure. Aligning IT with business objectives has been top on the CIO’s agenda for many years, and in an era of disruption, it has become more crucial than ever. In today’s dynamic digital world, technology is also inexorably linked to the products or services it empowers, but many organisations are still not achieving their digital goals. The main reason for this is the sheer complexity of modern IT enterprises. Step in hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), the latest technology causing a stir in the enterprise, promising the simplicity and flexibility that onerous legacy systems cannot. It promises operational efficiency, www.intelligentcio.com lowered costs and manageable scaling, as its model combines all of the data centers’ critical components, such as storage, networking, compute and backup, into pre- packaged units which can be controlled and managed by a single layer of software. This is a complete turnaround from traditional IT infrastructures that consisted of proverbial technology silos, that needed different people to manage networking, storage, systems administration and software. It’s no surprise then, that forward-thinking enterprises are looking to hyper-converged platforms to fulfil their on-premises IT infrastructure requirements, and as the technology matures, more will follow suit. So, let’s look at the benefits hype-convergence can bring to organisations. “ COMPARED TO LEGACY INFRASTRUCTURE AND INTEGRATED SYSTEMS, HYPER- CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE IS FAR MORE AFFORDABLE. INTELLIGENTCIO 67