NEW YORK, May 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- As companies
establish cloud strategies, conducting a comprehensive assessment
of their current IT environment coupled with the remediation of
existing IT issues is one of the first and most important steps
along a successful IT journey to the cloud. According to
Logicalis US, an international IT solutions and managed services
provider (www.us.logicalis.com), remediation is one of the most
beneficial parts of a thoughtful cloud strategy, and one that
ensures the upgrades made to each component contribute to the
development of a solid and well-planned converged
infrastructure.
"In most cases, a company's cloud environment will be a
reflection of its on-premise environment. If the organization's
on-premise environment is under- or over-utilized, its cloud
environment will be as well," says Kevin
Gruneisen, Senior Director, Cloud and Data Center Solutions,
Logicalis US. "Simply moving an inefficient environment to
the cloud will not by itself make it any more efficient. Performing
remediation of systems identified as inefficient – both physical
and virtual – while aligning each new project with the company's
long-term IT vision will help prevent companies from ending up in a
technological dead end that forces them to start over."
Three Key Areas for Remediation
- Virtualization: Remediation of virtual environments is
directly related to remediation of management abilities through the
development and execution of ITIL best practices as part of an IT
service management (ITSM) strategy. Research shows, a typical
IT environment is only about 50 percent virtualized. That clearly
leaves the other 50 percent to be virtualized. The ROI and
other benefits of extending virtualization are well
established. But companies also need to rationalize the
systems they have already virtualized. It is common to see
organizations with 100 physical servers that have been transformed
into 200 or more virtual servers. Because virtual machines
have the same support, security and compliance issues that physical
machines do, the cost of server sprawl can be significant.
- Blade Servers: Throughout the data center, blade
technology has initiated change. Blades are modular, need fewer
cables, require less floor space, use less power, require less
cooling and can be managed by integrated management tools. These
and other dramatic efficiencies have enabled the blade form factor
to take the data center by storm. Additionally, an investment
in the blade chassis is protected over time because additional
blades can always be added.
- Converged Storage: Rather than buying more storage than
is needed "just to be sure," as many IT departments do, CIOs need
to carefully select a specific storage solution that meets the
company's current needs, yet leaves future options open.
Converged storage area networks (SANs) for virtual server
farms, for example, allow IT pros to assign virtual storage and
provide high availability with commands from the hypervisor
environment the way they manage virtual servers. It's important,
however, to keep an eye on where storage is headed. Recent
advancements in flash and direct-attached storage may soon provide
services that were traditionally only supported through a SAN.
"The ideal goal, of course, is to get everything into the
converged infrastructure with the lowest costs per port, the lowest
cost for SAN storage, for compute resources, for everything,
compared to a discrete physical environment, and to take advantage
of the dynamic movement, self-provisioning, scaling and all the
benefits of a shared resources model," Gruneisen says.
Want to Learn More?
- Watch a short video about the IT Transformation Journey here:
http://www.ict-log.us/wNDd7 and take a quiz to see where your
company stands.
- Learn more about cloud solutions from Logicalis here:
http://www.ict-log.us/wNCJU.
- Find out what a Cloud Readiness Assessment can do for your
company: http://www.ict-log.us/wNCTv.
About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international IT solutions and managed services
provider with a breadth of knowledge and expertise in
communications and collaboration; data center and cloud services;
and managed services.
Logicalis employs nearly 3,500 people worldwide, including
highly trained service specialists who design, specify, deploy and
manage complex ICT infrastructures to meet the needs of almost
6,000 corporate and public sector customers. To achieve this,
Logicalis maintains strong partnerships with technology leaders
such as Cisco, HP, IBM, CA Technologies, EMC, NetApp, Microsoft,
VMware and ServiceNow.
The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of approximately
$1.5 billion from operations in
Europe, North America, South
America and Asia Pacific
and is fast establishing itself as one of the leading IT and
Communications solution integrators specializing in the areas of
advanced technologies and services.
The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec Limited, listed on
the Johannesburg and London AIM
Stock Exchanges, with revenues of over $5
billion.
For more information, visit www.us.logicalis.com.
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To learn more about Logicalis activities through a
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Media contacts:
Lisa
Dreher, VP, Marketing &
Business Development,
Logicalis US
lisa.dreher@us.logicalis.com
425-201-8111
www.us.logicalis.com
Karen Franse,
Communication Strategy Group
for Logicalis US
kfranse@gocsg.com
866-997-2424
www.gocsg.com
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SOURCE Logicalis US