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TCO, availability new headaches for IT


Johannesburg, 07 Aug 2020

Doing more with less and application availability are among the new headaches facing IT, says Johan Pellicaan, VP EMEA at Scale Computing.

Pellicaan says small, medium and large enterprises all face similar problems: “They need to do more with less money, providing a better functioning and more secure IT infrastructure to support business needs. IT alignment with the business is more important than ever before.

Certainly, in uncertain times as we face globally owing to COVID-19, companies must re-think their strategy going forward. Every organisation wants to reduce its IT infrastructure TCO. No one tells you: "I want to pay more for the same" – they will all say: "I need to do more with less." As such, it’s no longer about how we do it, but about how can we do it to lower TCO and reduce the challenges so that we’re better prepared for the future.”

Webinar: Simplify your IT infrastructure to do more with less

Join us on 20 August to get an in-depth view of the HC3 Platform, its features and how we can help you to re-imagine your data centre infrastructure while reducing your TCO. Click here to register your complimentary slot.

Pellicaan says challenging technologies like KVM virtualisation and NVMe storage are the new standard, gradually overtaking traditional technologies like VMware or Hyper-V virtualisation, standard flash and HDD storage. He says: “Not only is KVM the fastest-growing server virtualisation platform, it already dominates the network switching market, with 55%-65% market share (source: Future Market Insights). Leading names in the industry have disappeared simply because their innovation did not align with the continuous changing world.”

Pellicaan explains that with Scale Computing infrastructure solutions, customers will benefit from a fully integrated system, combining compute, storage and virtualisation. This means that no additional SANs or virtualisation software from third parties will be required because storage and virtualisation software are integrated in the Scale HC3 solution. “This is also called ‘hyper-converged’. Deployment and ongoing management time will drop by 25%-75% as a result of this. Furthermore, it is in Scale’s DNA to drive simplicity. This aligns with the need from the enterprise around edge-style solutions where IT knowledge is limited. As one of our retail customers once said: 'There is no IT knowledge between the apples and bananas in our stores.'”

The global pandemic has changed the demands on IT, he says. “We see organisations who were reluctant to support working from home now considering this as a standard. This, of course, has had a dramatic effect on travel cost, office space and at the same time – at least according to early surveys – increasing productivity. As such, working from home becomes the new normal for many. This means that organisations need to provide easy and secure access to corporate data and systems. With the ‘working from home’ Scale VDI solutions, organisations can save on both implementation time and licence cost versus solutions from other vendors.”

At the same time, IT must cope with growing volumes of data generated at the edge as the use of IOT devices explodes. This is driving a need for more compute power at the edge, moving away from the core data centre.

“Implementing core data centre style resiliency and security at the edge is a challenge,” he says. “Cloud connections aren’t always reliable or available and, as such, edge compute systems must be capable of operating on their own. If your POS system goes down, customers cannot pay, and you have to close the store. If you don’t get alarms because the temperature of the freezers goes up quickly, you might need to throw away the meat in those freezers. These types of events are very costly. So, in principle, with more and more automation and IOT devices helping us to run the business, the applications need to be available 24/7/365. Traditional systems cannot support these requirements and you don’t have any guarantee that Internet connection will always be available on the edge.”

Scale Computing answers these challenges, he says. “The Scale HC3 solution is the smallest hyper-converged environment you can buy. A full three-node, all NVMe cluster takes less space than a shoe box. It provides way more resiliency than a single or dual server solution. It can be deployed in volume without any onsite installation knowledge – ‘zero touch installation’. With pricing levels of a three-node cluster starting at the price of an average server, this is a game-changer. At the same time, single clusters can be deployed supporting over 1.3 petabytes of raw data. These are, of course, focused on the core data centre.

“With Scale HC3, customers will save dramatically on the initial installation as well as on ongoing support. This again means that IT resources can focus on more strategic things instead of continuously putting out the next fire.

“Overall, the Scale solution, no matter its size, has one of the lowest TCOs in the industry. In a time where finances are tight, and man hours are becoming increasingly expensive, this is a solution that everyone considering investing in new infrastructure should consider. Regardless of whether you’re an SME, mid-market or enterprise customer, or if you want to deploy 50 or 500 locations with the next-generation edge computing solutions.”

Webinar on 20 August

Scale Computing, in partnership with ITWeb, will present a webinar on 20 August to give South Africans an in-depth view of the HC3 Platform to re-imagine data centre infrastructure while reducing TCO. To register for this event, click HERE.

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