Resilient, scalable infrastructure to power business critical apps

Dataquest today organized a webinar titled: Importance of resilient, scalable infrastructure to power business critical apps. The participants were Sudharshan Aravamuthan, Technical Expert, Business Critical Apps & Converged, Hitachi Vantara, APAC, Sanjay Agarwal, Technology Head, Hitachi Vantara, and Sunil Rajguru, Editor, PC Quest, Cybermedia.

Opening the fireside chat, Rajguru said that with every crisis comes an opportunity. The human race always overcomes these challenges. We upgrade ourselves and come back strongly. Anticipation is power. World War 2 gave us the Colossus computer, rockets, jet planes and atomic energy.

Covid-19 is strengthening the WFH, collaboration and mobile workforce. There are also no-touch technologies. There is IoT, Industry 4.0, connected cars and drones. The concept of WFH for 10-15 years. The widespread adoption took place overnight.

Data is still the new oil. Data explosion continues. There are more data centers, cloud operations and devices, etc. The upper limit for IoT devices by 2030 is 500 billion. We have to upgrade ourselves at a very fast pace. Data and digital transformation are the buzzwords of today.

Data-driven organizations
Sanjay Agarwal pointed out that there was an interesting survey done with the CIOs some time back. About 70% said data. Processes and automation are very important. They are looking into data coming in from social media, etc. They are looking at product strategy.

CIOs are looking for a journey into a data-driven organization. This is a challenge that CIOs have. How do they reach there? What can they do to monetize the data, etc. You can store, enrich, activate and monetize the data, using the Hitachi SEAM model. The first way is to enrich the data, so it is good for analysis. There will be things like activation, interaction, etc.

Big Data has lot of unstructured data. CIOs have challenges such as do they have the right platform to store data, analyze data, etc.? There are issues such as compliance. From a platform perspective, there are challenges such as scalability. Traditional technologies are not able to answer these questions. This requires a platform change. There are challenges as well. Do they have solutions to meet DataOps? Object storage can be a value addition to the platform.

Cloud has always been a part of the CIO's IT strategy. There are some challenges. Many organizations that planned growth, are not able to do so due to the current situation. When it comes to DR, they do not have the ability to trigger sites. Hence, customers are accelerating cloud strategy. Your requirement for human intervention will also be automatically reduced. CIOs are redefining their cloud strategy. When it comes to management, they are also shifting focus. Can they manage all in a single, unified space?

Sudharshan Aravamuthan, added that customers are essentially looking at lift-and-shift. They are looking at containerization of workflows, etc. We will also see a lot of services and apps also getting modernized. It is key for CIOs to ensure non-stop data via apps, etc.

Sanjay Agarwal noted that there is talk about resilient infrastructure. We need to ensure the same level of assurance at the data level and the hardware level. When it comes to storage, the entire data is very important. CIOs are expecting multiple controls. This is just a part of the hardware uptimes. They are also asking: can you ensure 10% data availability? We have solutions that can help them. As for business continuity, there can be takeover approach available. This can be without human intervention. The hardware is assured in terms of uptime and availability.

Almost 50% of the CIOs are saying that all three components are important. Customer transactions should be fast. Data center consolidation and workload consolidation is also important. Certain digital apps can have full performance. We can also look at optimizing performance of the second- and third-stage apps. Almost 56% are said to be evaluating containers as part of the DevOps journey.

Top concerns addressed
Aravamuthan added that CIOs and technology leaders have some top concerns. These are around shifted priorities / perspectives, lean staff, changes what they can deliver on, etc. There is federated collaboration, resilient and scalable architecture, and a digital transformation program during the pandemic.

There are challenges that companies are facing due to WFH. Companies are ensuring the apps and data are kept secure. They are ensuring the devices are patched and up-to-date data. They are fixing and scaling the VDI infrastructure, and ensuring remote support to the end users.

Unstructured data is much larger. We are looking at modernizing that. The IT administration teams also looking at supporting the users. They are ensuring seamless apps are made available, across multiple form factors. Customers also need to adapt as most of their employees have now gone to WFH. This is the new world norm. About 74% of CFOs surveyed by Gartner expect some of their employees to continue working remotely, after the Covid-19 pandemic ends.

Hitachi Vantara and VMware solutions portfolio: It is not just about joint collaboration. We are managing the apps. VMware portfolio contains the vSphere hybrid cloud, Workspace ONE and Horizon for the private cloud, NSX digital workspace, etc.

Hitachi Vantara has simplified consumption, providing aaS cloud, converged unique compute platform CI, etc. We have helped accelerate the time to production.  There is automated provisioning, such as rule-based validation, unified management, including vROPS and vRLI integration, turnkey, such as cloud home drive and advanced analytics, and hybrid cloud, such as VMware Cloud Foundation ready, extend to VMware Cloud on AWS, and support for VSF FC storage. Customers are appreciating the idea of bringing in object storage.

VMware Horizon FastTrack Package ensures rapid desktop delivery. There is simplified deployment, minimizing risk with turnkey apps, and scaling by additional load balanced appliances.

Intelligent data management
Next, intelligent and secure data management is key. Hitachi Vantara has VDI solutions. These over smart data sharing, ransomware protection, on-premise and cloud ready, policy-based analytics, backup-less protection, secure data access, retain full visibility, etc.

Hitachi Vantara provides data services, from the edge to the cloud. There is an always-on virtual desktop infrastructure, along with an intelligent cloud home drive. That can help you extend beyond your data center. There is an always-on infrastructure. Hitachi Vantara has a modern infrastructure portfolio. The VSP ensures the foundation of a modern, enterprise infrastructure. The VSP5000 provides the strong technology foundation, giving the infrastructure agility. You almost have 43% reduction in the TCO.

You can have future-proof ready storage architecture even in your data center. You can also have AIOps out-of-the-box. We guarantee 100% data availability. There is replacement equipment credit, should data become unavailable. Hitachi Vantara is redefining business continuity. There is 100% automated business continuity. There is improved performance and assets utilization.

Customers can also eliminate or reduce their dependency on tapes. This approach can be done without human intervention. Hitachi Vantara also has solutions for the containers. The container orchestration engine bridges the traditional with modern IT. You can innovate faster with a container platform, supported by virtual and/or bare metal infrastructure. You can enable scalable apps services with persistent storage (CSI). Customers can deploy IT policies. Hitachi Vantara also has the EverFlex program.