Consolidation is the next big trend sweeping data centre management worldwide - and is particularly relevant in southern Africa.
So says Christo Briedenhann, country manager of Riverbed Technology, Africa, who notes that data centre consolidation is relevant in the region, as enterprises may have multiple branches spread over a vast geographic area, in addition to contending with erratic or costly power supplies. Furthermore, some locations may be considered high-risk areas to store valuable company data.
By centralising data (ie consolidating servers, storage, applications and desktops to the data centre), businesses realise greater ease-of-management, better security and risk mitigation, and significant cost savings, Briedenhann explains, adding this is critical in an environment in which IT must do more with less.
In SA, he notes, data centre consolidation delivers benefits that meet the region's unique needs - including the need to support branch offices in geographically remote areas, for business continuity in the face of erratic power supply, and the security of enterprise data in high-risk areas.
Besides data centre consolidation, Briedenhann also points out that, in line with enterprises' need to have a more agile, cost-effective and scalable data centre, there is increasing uptake of virtualised, next-generation data centres.
"There is also increasing demand worldwide for simplicity through programmable infrastructures that give control of the infrastructure back to the enterprise. This allows enterprises to tweak solutions to meet their specific business requirements and make changes right down to the coding level," he adds.
Describing challenges, Briedenhann says data centres must support demand for always-on access to enterprise applications by an increasingly remote and mobile workforce. "Access alone is not enough - the user experience must be as good in a remote office as it is at the head office, in order to ensure efficiency and maintain customer service levels.
"These challenges are compounded by big data proliferation and the growing demand for data centre performance that can support the need for real-time data analytics. The sheer complexity of managing multiple platforms with multiple interfaces adds to the challenges faced by IT departments as they seek simplicity and agility in their infrastructure."
Fred Giron, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, says data volume is rapidly rising, driven by new projects such as mobility, social computing and smart computing, which generate massive volumes of data and place stress on existing infrastructure. However, he says, the physical infrastructure (power and cooling) is not stretchable indefinitely.
Another challenge, Giron says, is that complexity is rapidly rising. "Infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals invest in infrastructure virtualisation projects in order to stretch the lifespan of their existing infrastructure. This has massive implications on the management complexity of the data centre infrastructure."
He also lists lack of visibility as another challenge. "Adding to these challenges is the fact that I&O professionals do not precisely know what is in their data centres and what is the related performance. This stops them from efficiently addressing an increasing number of questions coming from the business."
According to Giron, virtualisation projects also increase the complexity of managing data centre infrastructure.
"As companies move towards automation and orchestration of their data centre capabilities, the complexity is increasing many folds and is a major roadblock for many organisations on their private cloud journeys."
Share