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The Challenge of Managing Converged Infrastructure

Kent Erickson

While the use of converged infrastructure (CI) is becoming mainstream, the accompanying management tools are still a challenge, according to the third annual global State of Converged Infrastructure survey from Zenoss.

CI systems integrate servers, storage, network and virtualization components into one system that can be managed as a single unit rather than separate systems. With 84% of all respondents using or planning to deploy CI, the technology has reached mainstream status. Companies large and small are building data centers around these integrated systems because they reduce investment risk and offer a faster way to scale out IT infrastructure capacity.

"While converged infrastructure architectures are delivering real value as the foundational element behind the transformation already underway in enterprise data centers, these packaged offerings are lacking unified monitoring and analytics software," said Megan Lueders, VP of Marketing at Zenoss. "With more effective management tools available, there is a huge opportunity for IT organizations shops to dramatically increase their agility and IT effectiveness."

The 2015 CI survey provides many additional insights into data center modernization, including:

■ In companies with more than 5,000 employees, only 8% are not using or considering CI.

■ Despite being pervasively adopted, the survey results indicate management software is lagging behind, with 63% of respondents indicating they manage their CI deployments by repurposing existing management tools designed for traditional infrastructure.

■ Astonishingly, 25% of companies who have deployed CI are dealing with seven or more tools to manage it.

■ Key drivers for CI deployments include projects for big data, infrastructure as a service, unified communications, and custom application development.

Zenoss polled 410 IT professionals from across the world to determine how technology leaders are leveraging CI to respond to business needs, including 151 who have already adopted CI within their IT environments and another 194 who were currently considering or planning for it. 32% of these respondents come from organizations with more than 5,000 employees.

Kent Erickson is Alliance Strategist at Zenoss.

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The Challenge of Managing Converged Infrastructure

Kent Erickson

While the use of converged infrastructure (CI) is becoming mainstream, the accompanying management tools are still a challenge, according to the third annual global State of Converged Infrastructure survey from Zenoss.

CI systems integrate servers, storage, network and virtualization components into one system that can be managed as a single unit rather than separate systems. With 84% of all respondents using or planning to deploy CI, the technology has reached mainstream status. Companies large and small are building data centers around these integrated systems because they reduce investment risk and offer a faster way to scale out IT infrastructure capacity.

"While converged infrastructure architectures are delivering real value as the foundational element behind the transformation already underway in enterprise data centers, these packaged offerings are lacking unified monitoring and analytics software," said Megan Lueders, VP of Marketing at Zenoss. "With more effective management tools available, there is a huge opportunity for IT organizations shops to dramatically increase their agility and IT effectiveness."

The 2015 CI survey provides many additional insights into data center modernization, including:

■ In companies with more than 5,000 employees, only 8% are not using or considering CI.

■ Despite being pervasively adopted, the survey results indicate management software is lagging behind, with 63% of respondents indicating they manage their CI deployments by repurposing existing management tools designed for traditional infrastructure.

■ Astonishingly, 25% of companies who have deployed CI are dealing with seven or more tools to manage it.

■ Key drivers for CI deployments include projects for big data, infrastructure as a service, unified communications, and custom application development.

Zenoss polled 410 IT professionals from across the world to determine how technology leaders are leveraging CI to respond to business needs, including 151 who have already adopted CI within their IT environments and another 194 who were currently considering or planning for it. 32% of these respondents come from organizations with more than 5,000 employees.

Kent Erickson is Alliance Strategist at Zenoss.

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Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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