Data centre automation as a managed service is critical for unlocking the value of IT infrastructure to deliver business outcomes.
This is according to Stuart Fox, group business development director at Dimension Data, speaking during the Data Centres: The Next Frontier 2015 conference, at The Forum in Bryanston, yesterday.
Fox pointed out the need for the CIO to deliver business value is placing pressures on IT and the data centre.
The data centre has been evolving - transforming from a mega facility, filled with contrasting infrastructure that's difficult to integrate, maintain, and manage, into a more agile business response centre, he said.
Today's data centres need to deliver more content to more devices and many regions and continents securely and with more agility, he added.
Many organisations are facing challenges like aging infrastructure in data centre and network which prevents them from delivering increased business value, said Fox.
Businesses looking to change their IT infrastructure to deliver greater value are exploring ways to leverage automation to optimise utilisation and minimise waste, he continued.
Through data centre automation as a managed service, companies are able to lower costs, because there is zero capital expenditure investment. They can also improve flexibility and agility as well as deal better with complexity, he explained.
"Data centre automation helps you unlock value of hybrid IT to enable transformation, improve operational efficiency and increase business agility and realise return of investment."
Fox noted there are three ways to deliver business value using data centre automation as a managed service.
"We have learned three critical success factors that we have delivered for our customers with managed services, enabling customers to cut through challenges and transform their infrastructure for the future."
Businesses need to implement automation as a managed service with zero capital expenditure. Within 90 days, they should optimise infrastructure investments with a single management fee model and maximise availability and performance with proactive monitoring and seamless, integrated management, said Fox.
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