Information technology has always been in one state of disruption or another almost by definition as the science of technology evolves and market forces change, and IT Infrastructure is no exception -- particularly in the manner in which we host and manage our data center centric resources. There is dynamic change all around us as the cloud transforms the ideas of traditional ‘on premise’ big iron investments. Whether on premise or in the cloud, our clients are experiencing a tectonic shift to faster, lighter and easier to manage platforms that deliver a higher level of performance, a simplified operational interface, a much less costly resource model, and at significantly lower costs. We’ll walk you through the advantages of the open infrastructure providers as well as cloud options, and we’ll lay out some of the respective challenges as well. In addition, we’ll talk about who some of these disruptors are, how they are having a big impact in the market, and how you can leverage that for your extreme, disproportionate benefit.
If you’ve dipped your toe in the infrastructure disruption pool, some of the advantages outlined below may already be known to you. For those that have not yet taken the plunge or are just starting to educate yourself on the possibilities, there are two main areas where people are using the (disruptive) force for good: open infrastructure and the Cloud.
The on premise infrastructure (networking equipment, servers, storage, etc.) category is under tremendous disruptive pressure from modern suppliers (such as the ones listed below) where we are seeing savings from traditional investments of 40-60%
Compute - Brand-name, higher-cost proprietary servers with high-cost low supply resources or a generic low-cost open white-box servers with low-cost highly available resources
Networking – Proprietary high-cost hardware lock-in and high-cost low availability resources or commodity low-cost Software Defined Network (SDN) infrastructure with low-cost highly available resources
Storage Hardware – Proprietary high-cost Hard Disk Drives with high-cost low availability recourses versus Open Solid State Drives with low-cost high availability resources
Traditional Big Iron Technology Giants are walking dead!
HP Enterprise (HPE) recently separated from the printing and personal systems side of the business (HP, Inc.) and is working hard to distinguish themselves in the enterprise hardware market. They are achieving some success in our view with their CloudSystem to help provide an optimized, integrated path to cloud for organizations seeking a simpler path to design, provision and manage multi-tenant cloud environments with a relatively open, common management platform across multiple environments. We like that it is hardware, hypervisor and operating system agnostic. However, they still suffer from the old mind-set of trying to sell their over-engineered “enterprise grade” infrastructure products at a premium price with high cost service and support agreements. While HP clearly has an excellent compute and storage product line, notably with 3PAR, and decent product support, it remains a premium to market with plenty of other supplier options that stack up just as well to the HP product line for most customer requirements.
IBM suffers from much of the same old school approach as HP, but at least they saw the light of a dying business by selling its x86 server business to Lenovo in 2014. They are also working to establish credibility in the cloud market by pushing their IBM Cloud Business Solution and Softlayer subsidiary, but unless you are already an established IBM customer, it is too little too late in our view given the enormous momentum in this area with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Compute. IBM mid-range and mainframe systems still fill an important niche for some applications, but this too is become more difficult to justify when significant gains have been made in distributed computing architectures that collectively prove to have the processing capacity, high availability, scalability and responsiveness of traditional monolithic mainframes. In the end, their hardware and operating systems remain closed and are designed to lock in customers with “IBM only applications” and high cost support agreements.
Dell (EMC) We have already written on this topic previously, most recently in the Blog Post, “The Top 10 Reasons Why the Dell EMC Merger is DOA”
Cisco is very good at selling to IT – but they really aren’t doing anything special, given their typical cost premium, but continue to easily sell to the enterprise at a premium to other options. What you need to remember is this: The hardware is still driven by software. Why would you pay premium prices (relative to disruptive options) for name brand hardware when “generic” can do the same job for far less? Cisco is in the game now with generic hardware, but they are late to the party.
Afraid that using ‘no faceplate’ hardware could come back to haunt you at some point? Doesn’t seem to bother Facebook with its support for OpenStack, as well as with Google or Amazon that use so called open, commodity hardware without the known nameplates to build their massively scalable, easy to provision and manage compute, storage and network infrastructure environments in data centers around the globe.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (feasibility, planning, sourcing, implementing, managing). We help clients anywhere in the lifecycle for IaaS and PaaS solutions. As many of you reading this move to the cloud, the dynamics of cloud suppliers and agreements are changing rapidly to keep up with the growth of the sector. We have the latest market rates and value points to ensure you are optimized for the short and long term.
Open Stack Players
Operating Environment:
ManageIQ (Red Hat)
Networking:
Cumulus
Big Switch:
Compute:
Quanta
Storage:
Pure Storage
Cloud Players:
AWS
IDC reported that AWS shows a 64% reduction in TCO over 5 years versus on premise infrastructure. That’s a 560% ROI over 5 years! Here is what you need to know about two the big four players in this space, AWS, Google Computer Engine, Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace:
Google Compute Engine
Microsoft Azure
Rackspace
Disruption: Political Realities and Myths
Typically one of the biggest roadblocks to change within any organization, is not the technology itself or its ability to get the job done, rather it’s the people and politics that come with change. Generally – people don’t like change, especially when it may appear to be threatening.
Reality:
If you’re a Data Center Manager, and the enterprise moves everything to the cloud – or transitions to solid state and shrinks from 80 racks to 3, where would that leave them? Potentially looking for a job!
Because of this reality, in some cases IT may then start to push an agenda with leadership that builds a case against the cloud. Which leads us to some perpetuated myths…
Myths:
Here are just a few of the myths we see either perpetuated by groups and or individuals typically looking extend their reign or protect a fiefdom in the halls of I.T.:
In the end, without ‘change agents’ within the organization, it’s more likely than not that there will be little appetite for ‘lift and shift’ of the infrastructure. Careers are wrapped up in certifications and education with certain technology suppliers that have taken years to attain, so it’s natural to see why people are change and risk averse (most of the time). It’s not until we are at the tipping point where the early adopters are now the grey beards of the industry, will the slower moving enterprises make major changes. By then the economics will demand it and there will be little choice in the matter.
Where are we now?
By most estimations, we are still in the early adopter stage – but that is changing rapidly. The disruptors are becoming more main stream as their reputation for being safe and secure grows. When you start to review all the options, it becomes hard not to rationalize the case for moving to a solid state storage solution, investing in commodity, open hardware and/or moving more resources to the Cloud . While we are not yet at critical mass in our view, we believe that the tipping point is not far away – later in 2016 and into 2017 we’ll see the point of no return.
The impact could be significant for the laggard suppliers like IBM, Cisco, Dell/EMC and HP.
If you have any feedback on this, I’d be happy to hear it. Or if you have questions about your own environment and how you can start making a small or large impact, call us and we’ll talk about your unique situation.
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