Powering Digital with Hybrid IT

  The transformation is evident from the early 2000 and today CIOs are no longer relegated to the sidelines—rather they have taken the centerstage….but for how long? If the CIO is not progressive enough to induct newer tech and align IT for business to accrue more value, then, the very purpose of IT enabling better business outcomes stands defeated. In a book in early 2010, titled the ” The Real Value of IT” by Richard Hunter and George Westerman, they aptly said, “The cost of IT is not the value of IT. It’s time to start communicating in clear, measurable terms non-technical managers can understand how IT improves business performance.

The panacea the authors advocated:” The escape from IT’s value quandary begins with something as simple and profound as a change of paradigm for the IT organization. We can sum up this paradigm change as rule number 1: it’s not about IT. It’s all about business outcomes and business performance, whether you’re communicating IT’s internal performance or IT impacts on business operations and financials.” 

What experts call as a digital-led business transformation is not an easy task. To enable digital transformation enterprise need a proactive expert solution providers like Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and System Integrators like ThoughtSol comes into play. 

THE ROAD TO DIGITAL VIA HYBRID IT

Hybrid IT is now the new normal, not everything is going to the public cloud, and innovation is needed for the data center to level the playing field with the public cloud in terms of cost, speed, simplicity, and end user experience.

Reflecting on this Rajesh Dhar, Senior Director, Hybrid IT, HPE India says, “In Hybrid IT, HPE started with an industry leading base of innovations and our portfolio has never been stronger. For instance, HPE is uniquely positioned to address the various challenges of Hybrid IT whether its All-flash, HCI or Composable”

“ For instance in All-flash, clients can unlock the full potential of their data with intelligent storage built for hybrid cloud world leveraging 3-PAR and Nimble Storage. One can move data where it needs to be – at the edge, in the cloud, or on-premises. Moreover, AI can be leveraged to achieve autonomous IT and intelligent data management. Similarly, in Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI), one needs an enterprise-grade hyperconverged platform that speeds application performance, improves efficiency and resiliency, and backs up/restores VMs in seconds. Here HPE has a clear lead with its SimpliVity platform, that combines IT infrastructure and advanced data services into a single, integrated all-flash solution at a fraction of the cost of traditional offerings. Moreover, one can gain VM management and mobility, built-in backup and DR and game-changing data efficiency in this award-winning hyper-converged solution.”

Meanwhile, on the composable infrastructure side, HPE is considered as a pioneer and has a clear lead compared to the competition and clearly have the early mover advantage in this space. “ HPE’s approach to creating the composable infrastructure category was first to create the Unified API, followed by the composable infrastructure partner ecosystem and finally, the composable infrastructure platform, HPE Synergy,” quips Rajesh Dhar.

Looking at the Hybrid IT solutions, HPE’s offerings cut across a gamut, making for a well-meshed ecosystem aimed at IT modernization and hasten enterprises to transition to digital. “Digital transformation is driving an incredible pace of change for our industry and our customers’ needs are evolving just as quickly. With our Hybrid IT strategy and portfolio of innovations, partners, expertise and ‘as a service; delivery models we can help our customers : Optimize their current app and data environment, accelerate the transformation to ITas-a-Service models both on-prem and across a hybrid environment, help build next-generation data and analytics platforms and enable more flexible consumption and delivery models,” adds Rajesh Dhar.

Moreover, to reap the benefits of Hybrid IT, an ‘Intelligent Edge’ is a critical element. HPE sources say that this is where the next revolution in innovation will happen and its key to note that this is a data-driven trend. HPE Intelligent Edge gateways enable organizations to rapidly acquire, analyze, and take action on real-time data as it’s being collected for additional analysis at a later stage. Bringing computing and analytics close to the edge accelerates the speed of your decision-making and reduces the chance of lost opportunities or a missed red flag.

THE SI EDGE

The role of a System Integrator (SI) is very important in any transformation. Let’s here look at how a leading SI, ThoughtSol, a Platinum partner of HPE is enabling digital using a multi-pronged approach.

Quips Vinet Kumar, CEO, ThoughtSol, “ If I have to put very simplistically, from a ThoughtSol and SI perspective, Digital is nothing but IT modernization. What we do is to enable this transformation by seamlessly blending the systems, processes, technologies to enable IT modernization. Digital transformation has 3 pillars- Cloud or Cloudification, Security and connectivity. We play around in the first two pillars.”

“Our differentiation as an SI comes with our implementation strategies as well as our approach leveraging state of the art technologies from HPE and our enterprise infrastructure integration capabilities. Our USP lies in consulting, sizing and helping customers define their strategy for modern IT infrastructure. We enable enterprise infrastructure integration and security,” adds Vinet.

Says Ratan Dargan, Director - Technology Solutions, ThoughtSol, “ Digital Transformation is a significant differentiator for enterprises and ushers in defined benefits like greater customer experience, customer retention, faster time to market and a whole lot of performance deliverables. As an SI we work with a lot of corporates and as I look at the benefits our clients have accrued out of digital- it is across the board. For instance one of our clients from the hospitality sector has seen wide-ranging benefits post digital- right form higher occupancy rates to a renewed uptick in business.”

Clearly, companies like HPE and SI’s like ThoughtSol are playing an enabling role in making enterprises to embrace a ‘New style of IT’ and ushering in the era of Hybrid IT.