With the advent of big data and analytics as a key business strategy, effective data storage, processing and access become even more critical to the enterprise. And while IT holds the main responsibility for creating and maintaining data centers, the move from older technologies, such as physical servers and storage systems, to a more agile and cost-effective computing model is very much a business endeavor.
Our whitepaper, “Determining the Right Enterprise Data Center Strategy,” explores some of the vital issues related to updating corporate data centers to meet the growing demands of business users. It describes the role of technologies such as server and storage virtualization, cloud computing and software-defined solutions, and how they can help IT support the business more effectively.
Connecting the C-suite and IT
For business leaders, including CEOs, chief operating officers and line-of-business heads, this is not a time to sit back and let IT do all the work in planning and developing the modern data center. Business leaders need to weigh in on decisions about how computing models, such as cloud services, can best be used.
Business leaders, particularly those in charge of departments, know better than anyone what users want and need from a technology standpoint in order to do their jobs better. Along with IT, they need to take a good look at what the data center means to the business today — and in the future.
A good part of this evaluation includes deciding which applications should reside in the cloud and which should be kept in-house. For example, the heads of sales and customer service should be part of the decision-making process regarding whether to use a software-as-a-service offering for customer relationship management. The chief financial officer should be part of the discussion about where to house finance data. And the CEO should weigh in on the use of cloud solutions, such as infrastructure as a service and other offerings.
Wasting no time
Our whitepaper, “Determining the Right Enterprise Data Center Strategy,” also covers the importance of identifying the right IT solutions provider partner for evaluating and enhancing data centers. The right partner can help enterprises with planning and direct them to the best vendor partners they’ve already vetted.
The sooner you begin the data center discovery conversation with your senior executive peers, the better. There’s no time to waste with the average speed of tech for all organizations at 63 mph — a fact we uncovered in our Insight Intelligent Technology™ Index, which surveyed more than 400 IT professionals with decision-making responsibilities.