For most organizations of any size or maturity, having a variety of IT systems and services is the default, whether by accident or design. Running only on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications and the public cloud is a viable option for some start-ups and smaller organizations, but even there, most will also have or want some local systems, storage, and so on.
The simple fact of the matter is that different workloads have different properties, usage patterns and resource needs. Organizations need to think carefully about why and where they place each workload, therefore, based on a wide range of factors including their complexity and business value, the need for connectivity, performance and availability, and compliance-driven requirements for the geo-location of data.
This is why we see some organizations adding hybrid (public/private) cloud services alongside their traditional on-prem IT, while others who went all-public cloud are now pulling some workloads back on-prem, after realizing the public cloud’s implications for control, cost, compliance, connectivity, performance, etc.
The danger is that this can result in an inflexible, complex and confusing jumble of services. What we need instead is to add these new services and then operate the resulting infrastructure as a single coherent whole – as genuinely ‘hybrid IT’.
Into this picture comes the integrated system, a combination of server, storage and networking that’s bought, installed and operated as a unified solution. In this paper, we look at how hybrid IT and integrated systems can come together, with integrated systems offering a simple way – albeit not the only way – to implement the local end of a hybrid IT infrastructure.
Bryan is a technology enthusiast and industry veteran. He has been analysing, explaining and writing about IT and business in a highly engaging manner for around three decades. His experience spans the early days of minicomputers and PC technology, through the emergence of cellular data and smart mobile devices, to the latest developments of the software-defined age in which we all live today. Over his career, Bryan has seen at first-hand how IT changes the world – and how the world changes IT – and he brings that extensive insight to his role as an industry analyst.
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