Data Center Complexity Increases Need for Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Companies that run data centers are struggling with capacity and complexity and increasing the demand for hyperconverged infrastructure, according to a new study.

A Maxta survey of 421 companies and their data-center buying preferences found that their biggest concern is having adequate capacity for business workloads. The study also revealed that the complexity of data centers is an issue – particularly for very large and small companies.

Approximately half (46 percent) said they are planning to refresh their infrastructure within the next 12 months. The creators of the survey argue that hyperconverged infrastructure is the solution.

“Based on the survey responses, it’s clear that hyperconverged infrastructures provide an ideal operating environment to help organizations of all sizes minimize complexity and overcome the storage challenges they are faced with,” said Scott Lowe, CEO of ActualTech Media, which conducted the survey on behalf of Maxta.

Mitch Seigle, Maxta’s vice president of marketing, says data-center complexity, storage performance and capacity are challenges that occur across a wide variety of industries and company sizes.{ad}

“As a result, hyperconvergence is now gaining significant interest for general infrastructure use in addition to specific applications or projects,” he said.

Terri McClure, a senior analyst covering hyperconverged infrastructure for Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), says the survey results line up with market trends. She says hypcerconverged solutions are getting “broader adoption in the data center.” But that should come with a provisions.

“For IT organizations looking at hyperconverged solutions as a data-center refresh strategy, careful consideration needs to be given to the network and management layers, and managing many small appliances can be more challenging than managing fewer large systems,” she told Channel Partners.

Kevin Rhone, director of channel acceleration for ESG, adds that partners should consider hyperconverged solutions as a solid professional-services option, as they consult with companies about the complexity and help design the IT environment.

“IT channel resellers need to think of the ripple effects on their businesses of selling hyperconverged solutions,” he said. “On the surface, there are fewer moving parts so it is more of a simple appliance sell — but as the hyperconverged cluster grows there is almost an annuity aspect as nodes are added for scale over time.”