MANILA, Philippines - Information technology has undergone a massive transformation in the last decade. One result of this change is IT has become so enmeshed with the business that the line between business and IT strategy is vanishing fast.
Increasingly, executives are looking to technology to anticipate growth, increase agility, and enable the innovation of new processes and services that deliver exceptional efficiencies.
Given how dependent today’s enterprises are on IT, it is clear that the answer to raising efficiency across the entire organization lies in increasing efficiency throughout the entire IT infrastructure.
Achieving efficient IT, however, isn’t only about squeezing the most out of technology assets. It’s also about staffing, budget allocation, maintenance, and management processes.
By addressing the people, processes, and technology that drive IT efficiency, enterprises can put the right amount of computing power at the fingertips of every user when and where they need it. This enables end-users to achieve their own specific aims and, in concert, those of the enterprise — all while saving on capital and operational costs and having more budget for innovation initiatives.
Target: Efficient IT
Such an organization-wide transformation can be brought about by embracing core technological elements. Reaching from the desktop to the data center, these work together to enhance IT agility and operational efficiency, freeing workers to focus on innovation and growth. They are:
• Virtualization. Virtualization, in which resources are unified in a shared pool, boosts efficiency by reducing the number of silos and touchpoints in the IT infrastructure. While the data center is a popular starting point for virtualization, it can be applied across the entire infrastructure. Benefits include reduced complexity, streamlined management processes, swift service deployment, enhanced agility, higher asset utilization, and improved operating performance.
• Intelligent data management. Data have become increasingly valuable as both a business accelerator and a competitive differentiator. This value can be tapped only when it is put in the right place at the right time for the right cost
Many enterprises, however, store data in a loosely organized and haphazard manner by simply adding storage devices when existing ones run out of capacity. This is untenable in the long term — enterprises simply can’t justify the huge capital and operational expenditures required to keep pace with storage demands.
• Mobility. Today’s increasingly mobile workers require anytime, anywhere access to enterprise data and applications from a wide range of personal and corporate devices: notebooks, netbooks, tablets, smartphones, etc. Supporting all these devices can put a strain on IT resources, as each user has to be provided with a single digital identity; data, applications and services have to be delivered reliably and consistently; and remote connections need to be secured.
• Consumerization. With a technology-savvy workforce demanding support for personal devices, the time is ripe for enterprises to facilitate the move toward the consumerization of IT. Such consumerization requires stepped-up requirements to protect, monitor, back up, and provide remote access. In turn, this calls for IT organizations to protect the security of the network while enabling seamless access for remote workers, with the broader goal being the insulation of the enterprise from new threats while unleashing end-user productivity with a comprehensive array of device types and operating systems, applications, and software.
• Cloud computing. In cloud computing, IT resources are virtually pooled and delivered as services shared by many applications. Users provision these services from the pool, consume them, and then return them to the pool, where they can be used by other applications. This on-demand model allows enterprises to use computing resources more efficiently than traditional computing infrastructure. IT management is streamlined, costs are reduced, and the organization becomes more responsive to market dynamics.
Turning strategy into reality
Together, these core elements form an efficient IT strategy, one that enables enterprises to change the fundamental cost structure of the IT model to focus more technology resources on strategic pursuits than ever before.
Implementing these transformational technologies is no walk in the park, though. As an example, having a heterogeneous infrastructure, a mishmash of processes and disjointed applications can make it difficult for an enterprise to unlock the full value of virtualization.
Similarly, in order to be able to manage their data intelligently, enterprises need to first build efficiency into every point throughout the entire storage network. Without the proper skills, resources and solutions, this task can be a very arduous one.
To help enterprises of all sizes and across the whole spectrum of industry adopt these core elements and achieve efficient IT, Dell offers open and scalable solutions designed to boost efficiency, enhance productivity, and improve control while eliminating waste.
“The Dell solutions embody the five transformational technologies mentioned above, which are the cornerstone of the Dell approach to efficient IT. This approach, which addresses not just technology but also the people and processes engaged in it, eliminates wasteful expenditures and duplicate processes to increase IT agility. It also extends the life of existing technology by enhancing flexibility and minimizing management overhead, resulting in an on-demand, pay-as-you-go model that scales easily in response to emerging opportunities as they arise,” said Christopher Papa, country manager of Dell Philippines.
Using these Dell efficient IT solutions, enterprises can leverage IT resources already in place and cost-effectively evolve their existing infrastructure into an information fabric that is open, capable, affordable, flexible and responsive. This result, in turn, enhances productivity across an increasingly social, mobile workforce collaborating to advance innovation and business growth.