Integrated Systems Will Shave Off Up To 25% of Spend On Servers and Storage by 2020

This is an interview with Santhosh Rao, principal research analyst in UAE, Gartner, Inc., formerly senior solutions architect with NetApp, about trends and developments in IT infrastructure and what Indian organizations are focusing on this year, ahead of the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations and Data Center Summit in Mumbai, India next May 4-5.


Integrated Systems Will Shave Off Up To 25% of Spend
On Servers and Storage by 2020

Q. What are integrated systems and how will they help organizations with IT infrastructure requirements? 
A. An integrated system combines compute, storage and networking assets with optional components such as management tools, OSs and virtualization to create a single architecture. Most integrated systems vendors are promoting a hybrid hardware- and software-based solution, which is either homogeneous or based on close collaboration among vendors. Integrated systems increase IT agility and speed to deployment by delivering infrastructure services via automated, near-real-time allocation/reallocation of pooled resources.

Q. What are the drivers for adoption of integrated systems? 
A. Cost savings, optimized time to production and simplified operations are the top drivers for the adoption of integrated systems. Gartner predicts that integrated systems will shave off up to 25% of combined spend on servers and storage by 2020. Within this reduced design time, simplified procurement and improved time to delivery and simplified integration with existing technology are top considerations.

Q. How are organizations in India rethinking their data center strategies? 
A. A bigger focus on cloud, mobility and analytics has led many organizations to rethink their data center strategies. Organizations in India are increasingly challenging the need to buy and maintain discrete data center components, and are also evaluating architectures that would provide the agility, flexibility and the scale desired for new application workloads. At the same time, they now have greater choice and availability of newer technologies, such as hyperconverged infrastructures.

Q. What is hyperconverged infrastructure and how is it relevant to businesses? 
A. Hyperconverged integrated systems (HCIS) is a subset of the integrated systems market and will be a key growth engine for this market. These systems tend to cost less than traditional integrated systems, and have a good mix of established and emerging vendors. HCIS is poised for growth because of its low initial acquisition cost compared with traditional integrated systems due to lower SAN costs and features, such as faster time to provision and deploy, better overall TCO, and ease of maintenance/upgrades.

Q. Do you see large scale adoption of integrated systems in India? 
A. The adoption of integrated systems in India is being driven by organizations looking to replace existing infrastructures and, as a result, evaluating their options in the market. Large enterprises have focused their efforts on building intelligent data centers that focus on a quick response to the requirements of the business. While most of the spend on integrated systems to date has been driven by the banking and insurance sector, and service providers, the growing number of use cases and an increase in marketing by a wider community of vendors have led to a greater awareness and greater acceptance of integrated systems.