Blades Giving Way to More Modular Infrastructure

Technology solutions come and go in the enterprise, if not in an absolute sense then at least in terms of the dominant roles they play in driving data productivity.

At one time, the mainframe was all-powerful, and while many mainframes continue to provide valuable service to the enterprise, it is fair to say they are no longer the focus of most server infrastructure initiatives. Many mainframe workloads, in fact, were pushed onto rack servers first and then blades in the 1990s and 2000s as distributed architectures proved more flexible and easier to manage. But now that cloud computing and modular infrastructure are rising to meet the needs of mobile collaboration and Big Data workloads, it is fair to ask whether the sun is setting on blades as well.

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Emerging Data Infrastructure: Better, but Still Problematic

Embracing the future is usually more of a process than an event. Once the initial FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) passes, there is often a complete 180 in which all the problems of today are expected to be swept away. Once actual development and deployment kick in, however, the real-world practicalities become evident, leading to the realization that new issues invariably arise to take the place of the old.

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Apple in the Enterprise: Is It Real This Time?

Apple has set its sights on the enterprise. This is nothing new, of course, as Apple has wanted to play a part in the world of professional data communications for decades.

But with its hold on consumer gadgets, and the idea that most knowledge workers would prefer to use a single client device for both their personal and professional lives, the company is now angling to invade the workplace in a big way.

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Converged Infrastructure Is on the Upswing

Some interesting data came out recently regarding the deployment of converged infrastructure (CI) in the enterprise, and while it is too early to say that CI is “taking over” the data center, it certainly is shaping up to be a significant growth area.

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Managing Containers in the Cloud

With so many technology initiatives hitting the enterprise these days, it’s getting difficult to see exactly how they will come together to shape the data environment of the future. A case in point is containers and the public cloud.

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When Latency Kills, Memory Solutions Start Looking Better

It seems almost ironic that the solid-state storage arrays that are quickly supplanting hard disks in the enterprise are already losing ground to server-side Flash and in-memory storage architectures.

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The Many Flavors of Data Infrastructure

It seems that with each passing day, the software-defined data center (SDDC) becomes more of a fait accompli. Data infrastructure will consist of advanced software architectures resting atop commodity hardware, and all but the largest of organizations will shift their entire data environment to the cloud.

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Disruption for the Datacenter’s Sake

Most people, when asked if they favor or are oppose to disruption, will say they are opposed to it. Disruption is scary, produces a lot of unknowns and generally requires a great deal of work as new processes and skill sets take hold in the workplace.

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How the Data Center Must Change for the New Digital Era

Regardless of whether you think the enterprise will retain its own data facilities going forward or simply port everything to the cloud, the fact remains that the data center of today will bear only the slightest resemblance to those in the very near future.

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The Speed Factor Behind Big Data

It is widely recognized that Big Data must also be Fast Data if it is to provide any real value to the enterprise. But many organizations are just now starting to realize what a significant challenge this will be.

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