Kent Christensen takes a look at the history of IT silos and how converged data centers are bringing those silos to an end for Data Center Knowledge.
As enterprises have continued to consolidate and virtualize data centers and, ultimately, move to a converged data center, benefits can be gained from moving away from traditional silos. Mr. Christensen in his article first points out the weaknesses of IT silos:
- Inability to better utilize or share the silo’s resources
- Added time to deploy, update or manage a new silo
- Rising operating costs
- Added complexities and the need for redundant systems
- Architectural inflexibility for scaling
Unlike the IT silo environment, in a converged data center system the server, network and storage layers are increasingly aware of each other and work together to ensure optimal resources use. Benefits can be:
- Less moving parts to manage and troubleshoot
- Greater resource utilization at a lower cost
- Faster application provisioning
- Faster IT response to business priority changes or market conditions
- Easier scaling
- Shorter pathway to on-demand services or private cloud environments
And, in today’s world with cost being an increasingly important factor, many find that a converged system can lead to lower costs to support the business’ growing data and application needs.
