Shifts in cloud and edge computing will optimise the flow of data and enable tech-savvy business to unlock game-changing performance benefits. These changes will drive adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technology which could transform customer experience and deliver significant productivity gains. Meanwhile, real-time analytics will enable enterprises to plan more effectively and boost efficiency.
Forward-looking CIOs understand that now is the time to put the digital foundations in place to support a wave of innovation and ensure their organisation can maintain pace. They know that the infrastructure decisions they make now will help determine their future success. Foundry’s 2023 State of the CIO study1 found that modernising infrastructure was a top five priority for IT leaders, and that systems modernisation was a top three driver for tech investments in 2023.
Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) can drive this type of change. It is a flexible software-defined infrastructure that integrates the core compute, storage and network resources enterprises need within a single node or cluster. This methodology is more efficient, but it is also highly scalable. New servers and applications can be provisioned within minutes. Need more capacity? Just add another node.
Crucially, HCI also addresses the growing complexity of infrastructure. Instead of a range of disparate servers, storage and network hardware, HCI presents IT teams with standardised components that can be managed through a single console. Teams, therefore, spend less time maintaining operations, and more time on innovation.
All these advantages are apparent in a recent IDC report2 on Dell and VMWare’s Vxrail. Through reductions in unplanned downtime, IT cost savings and boosts to staff productivity, IDC found that organisations that had deployed Dell VxRail HCI achieved over $4.5m per year in business-related benefits, with an ROI of 463%3. That represents a $54,000 average annual benefit per Dell VxRail node, with each paying for itself in just 11 months4.
IDC found that cost reductions in hardware and infrastructure management played a major role here. With all management through a single pane of glass, IT infrastructure management teams were 61% more efficient, with a matching 61% reduction in predicted Total Cost of Ownership over five years5. Organisations also found that new servers and storage were 79% and 54% faster to deploy, while VM’s took roughly half the time to launch.
IT teams were using the time saved from their operational duties to focus on IT projects with significant business value. In one case, the efficiencies enabled three engineers to continue to manage an estate that had tripled in size. Having a more performant, optimised infrastructure was found to release some of the pressure on development and DevOps teams to perfect their code for a sub-optimal infrastructure, and instead launch and iterate over time. After adoption of VxRail, companies interviewed for the research saw a productivity boost of 15% for their application development and DevOps teams, resulting in an annual productivity-based business value of $390,000 for each organisation6.
VxRail nodes are perfectly placed to accelerate new innovations in both traditional and generative AI.
“The results speak for themselves,” says Dell’s Director of Multicloud Infrastructure Product Marketing, Nancy Hurley. “Our customers continue to realise incredible benefits with VxRail.”
These include, she adds, ‘the consistent operational efficiencies delivered through our VxRail HCI System Software’ with ‘the management simplicity delivered through extensive automation and orchestration.’
Read the full research study now.