Earlier this week, Zenoss released the findings from our second annual “The State of Converged Infrastructure” report. Primarily focused on North American and multi-national organizations, 183 IT professionals responded from dozens of industries and companies large and small. The pool of respondents was a good mix C-Level executives, IT directors and managers, system administrators, server, storage, and network administrators, system architects, applications developers, and more, which means that the survey provides a pretty broad and fairly representative perspective on the state of converted infrastructure in the market.
Zenoss conducted the survey during Q2, 2014 with the goal of exploring how technology leaders were using or planning on using converged infrastructure solutions such as Cisco UCS, NetApp FlexPod, and VCE Vblock to respond to changing business needs. If you have ever had any doubts about the acceptance of converged infrastructure, this study should remove them.
Key Findings
Key findings from the 2014 survey include:
Adoption of converged infrastructure is proceeding briskly
Just under half the organizations surveyed already report using a converged infrastructure stack and another 44% considering or planning its adoption. While some organizations do have converged infrastructure offerings from more than one vendor, Cisco UCS and its derivatives, VCE Vblock and NetApp FlexPod, dominate the marketplace. Offerings from other vendors were also considered; most notable vendors include HP, Oracle, EMC VSPEX, IBM Pure System, and Dell. Interestingly, even smaller companies are showing significant interest in converged infrastructure, with 20% already using converged infrastructure and another 67% actively considering it.
Technology companies are NOT leading the charge right now
The finance industry appears to adopting converged infrastructure most rapidly, even ahead of technology companies, who are typically the early adopters. Agility and efficiencies are the two leading reasons for the consideration and adoption of converged infrastructure. These are the same two reasons cited in our 2013 study. Once again, most organizations are adopting converged infrastructure in support of a VMware project, but there are many other adoption drivers, including IaaS and unified communications.
Many plan on building their own converged infrastructure, but not many do
As they begin their converged infrastructure initiatives, many companies plan on building their converged infrastructure themselves. In fact, just under 50% said that DIY would be their preferred approach. However, based upon what we learned from organizations that already have a converted infrastructure in place, that doesn’t always happen. Only a small number actually deploy their own home-grown converted infrastructure.
Converged infrastructure appears to be delivering solid value
Three out of 4 companies currently using converged infrastructure report delivering better customer service, while less than 2% believe that their customer service has gotten worse since deploying converged infrastructure.
Organizations are still missing a key ingredient – modernizing infrastructure management
Despite making significant investments in upgrading their infrastructure, most organization are still not doing much to upgrade their tools. Many plan on continuing to use their existing tools. Others plan on buying multiple additional tools to manage their environment. We believe this is a huge miss. A study conducted by Forrester Consulting, “How Too Many Tools Can Impact Your IT Operation Efficiency”, talks about how having too many tools can drive up the operational costs and drive inefficiencies within the environment. Use the “True Cost of IT Monitoring Calculator” from Zenoss to gain some additional insight around the costs of too many tools.
Not everybody is on board
There are some converged infrastructure naysayers out there. The 10% or so of organizations that felt for various reasons that converged infrastructure was not for them gave multiple reasons. However, the most common reason was “Our infrastructure is working fine”.
Get More Details!
Download “The State of Converged Infrastructure” report. In this article, we’ve simply highlighted some of the key findings from the report. The 20 page report contains many other details, as well as a cool infographic that shows the 2014 state of converged infrastructure at a glance. If you are considering acquiring converged infrastructure, building your own converged infrastructure, or just interested in how the converged infrastructure market is evolving, then this report is for you.
Watch a short two-minute video about the challenges of converged infrastructure. In two minutes, learn how Zenoss helps IT Operations teams unify monitoring of their converged infrastructure stacks with the other physical, virtual, and cloud-based resources in their IT environment.
Read The Skeptics: 8 Reasons Application Developers & Customers May Fight Converged Infrastructure. If you are considering a move to converged infrastructure but getting push back from others in your organization, get some tips on how you can get everyone on the same page and feeling more confident about the transition to converged infrastructure.
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