Guest Blog: Move to SDDC Requires Careful Management of Personnel, Process Changes

Moving to a software-defined data center (SDDC) requires many changes for businesses processes throughout an organization. MSPs can play an important role in helping customers manage that change.

The biggest change when moving to a SDDC occurs within the data center environment itself—both in terms of personnel and IT processes. While these changes are necessary, they can cause a lot of upheaval if they aren’t communicated and carried out effectively.

For example, the SDDC drives significant change in the day-to-day work of IT staff. In the past, the three tiers of the data center—compute, networking and storage—were managed by different teams, and there was little or no crossover. These kinds of siloed teams have traditionally been poor at collaborating or handing off issues meant for another team.

In the SDDC environment, the IT organization is much flatter, with fewer specialists and more overall generalists. And with the automation that the SDDC provides, fewer IT staff are required.

So, how can you help your customers choose who to keep in the SDDC environment and who to reposition?

“[Help customers] choose the team players,” says Ben Woo, managing director of Neuralytix Inc., a global industry analyst firm. “Being a team player is most important in this new environment, so choose those who are willing to work in a new type of environment. Every CIO and director of IT I’ve spoken to, large and small, is unapologetic about the fact that there will be people who won’t fit in.”

The move to the SDDC also requires IT processes to change, and the biggest change is in the way employees and divisions request and use data center resources.

To smooth the process, Woo suggests that MSPs create a service catalog with everything that a division manager or employee might want from the data center. This would include compute power, storage resources, network bandwidth and access to specific applications.

For example, an analyst might request access to a particular data set and three applications to run against it, along with a small server and storage configuration. The analyst would know that if he runs out of memory or storage space, he can easily dial it up through software.

“These are all new processes that change once you move forward in a software-defined environment,” said Woo, “but by preparing your users and IT staff, the benefits will become clear very quickly”

For more information on the Software-Defined Data Center please visit http://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/techpaper/technical-whitepaper-sddc-capabilities-itoutcomes-white-paper.pdf.

Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly and are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship.