Software-defined Storage (SDS) is coming to a data center near you!
By the time you read this, it’s already happening. EMC is using innovative software and hardware offerings such asViPR, Isilon, Atmos and others to bring SDS to reality today. Utilizing this framework of technologies, EMC is allowing customers to provide the elastic capacity that customers are looking for to respond to existing demands. These challenges actually provide the opportunity today for customers to meet and fulfill the requirements of the 2nd Platform and begin the transformation to the 3rd Platform.Addressing customers existing needs is the first step to offering services that internal customers and business partners need. By defining these services, whether it’s as simple as provisioning new LUNs to VM Hosts or Windows Hosts or as complex as providing them the ability to create or restore their own snapshots via VPLEX, IT can begin to transform itself into an internal service provider and ultimately a business partner.
EMC, VMware and VCE can do this today. However, the culture of IT departments is the greatest obstacle in this process. Changing the mindset to which we’ve all become accustomed can be a difficult road. But the greatest benefits come at the end of that road, through lower costs and higher satisfaction rates of customers and employees. Simplification through automation is the fastest means to working smarter and not harder.
- What services are you already offering?
- Can you define or identify what tasks or processes or applications your IT organization is already offering?
- For those services, do you know how much it’s costing you and your organization?
- Do you happen to know or have you considered how much your competition is offering that same service or task for?
If you can answer even one of those questions, you’re already ahead of the pack. Chances are your IT organization is currently offering services, but most of those organizations have not identified these processes or repetitive tasks as services. At EMC we have the means and experience to help you identify those services.
We also have the ability to help you calculate the cost to you and organization. Whether or not you decide to embrace Chargeback/Showback is irrelevant; however, every organization has a budget process. If you or your IT organization is not going into that budget process armed with financial data to support the services/processes you’re already being burdened with, how can you expect to be able to grow for future support of newer services?
Financial data is simple data to obtain for most. Cost calculators do not have to be overly complex because the end result is simple to understand. This is the way you transform yourself and your organization. Rethink the way you offer these services, how much they cost to maintain, seek to understand them fully and then you can begin to change them.