Nervous about your legacy data center operations but not sure how to tackle modernization? Is your agency looking for a fresh approach to pull your IT environment out of the stone age? One that will lower costs, increase speed, and align with your mission objectives?
Gone are the days where embracing digital transformation is an option for federal agencies—it’s now a mandate. To meet your critical mission needs in today’s ever-evolving federal IT landscape, your agency must be able to rapidly build, deploy and manage new applications and services.
So, how do you ditch the silos and innovate your infrastructure so you don’t get left behind?
Implementing a converged architecture—a merging of compute, storage and networking infrastructure in the data center—is crucial when it comes to cloud migration. Converged infrastructure enables faster development and a smoother transformation while optimizing existing applications.
Out with the old, in with the new (technology)
Traditional IT operation models, where specific IT resources are deployed for particular tasks or applications in a silo-like manner, are fast becoming an outdated and impractical way of operating in today’s cloud-based, automated world.
Some existing data center architectures might not be able to handle modern-era mission demands like increased storage or cloud-based delivery models. Those silos have begun to break down. Replacing them with a similar system is simply not a sensible or viable option for many agencies across the federal landscape.
Instead, agencies are continuing to tap into the power of converged infrastructure to pool IT resources and create a stronger and more efficient environment that frees up critical IT time and resources. True to its name, converged infrastructure brings numerous IT components together into a unified, optimized computing strategy. You can blend storage, servers, networking components, facilities and other parts of an IT system so that they work cohesively together. Benefits of centralized management and consolidated systems include:
- Increased resource utilization rates, which can decrease capital expenses
- Integrated security, which offers a tighter defense against exterior and interior threats
- Automated management, and consolidated storage and network equipment, reducing costs
- Reduced data center equipment needs, which leads to improved cooling and power usage
- Stronger IT agility through a virtual environment, especially with single-console management capability
- More efficient use of IT staff since converged infrastructure eliminates patching and inefficient add-ons
- Reduced existing data center constraints in terms of storage, speed and uptime
- Smoother, quicker cloud-ready operations
More agility = better results
Data continues to grow at a rapid rate, and new technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning require continuous access to large data sets to drive mission success for government agencies. For many, the acquisition and management cost of continuing to purchase server space and storage for each of their individual applications is simply outdated and impractical.
Being able to handle ever-growing data storage, capacity management and network security—all while balancing increased compute needs, resource constraints and federal mandates to migrate to the cloud—can be challenging with a traditional data center model.
Instead, agencies are relying on converged infrastructure to accommodate Big Data and the subsequent push to make all applications cloud-ready. As data increases and IT resources become even more important, converged infrastructure can offer agility without increased operational costs or added complexity—a huge win for federal agencies with set budgets and a list of competing mission priorities.
Imagine being able to quickly complete all those mundane IT tasks like rolling out applications to your entire agency or provisioning resources for faster processing speeds. Instead of setting aside days for those manual and tedious to-do list items, they can be achieved with a few clicks (and within a few minutes) with a converged environment. Speaking of speediness, converged infrastructure systems come preconfigured and pretested, making for a simple and fast deployment for agencies.
That frees you up to focus more on strategy and less on management, creating an IT organization that’s truly aligned with mission goals and innovation, versus one that spends its time reactively hole-patching.
It’s time for future-focused IT
Converged infrastructure represents an innovative era for data center models in the federal IT space, blowing apart the silos for a far more efficient, cost-effective and powerful solution that enables agencies to execute their critical missions more effectively. Plus, with technology that focuses on preserving existing investments, you don’t need to rip and replace your current environment. With a converged infrastructure system that’s geared toward your organization, you can tap into prepackaged, efficient systems that tie together Big Data, server virtualization, servers, storage, management and more.
That means you can go beyond a segmented environment and move into an operational model ready for the future.
Want to know more about how converged infrastructure can offer your agency a competitive advantage? As a leading technology solutions provider helping federal agencies modernize their IT for the past 25 years, Sirius Federal has tremendous experience implementing Pure Storage’s suite of tools designed specifically to help public sector entities optimize their data center operations. Whether you’re ready to make the move to a converged system, or want to know more about your options, contact our team to learn how we can help you transform your digital footprint.
About the Author: Jeff Grunewald
Jeff Grunewald is the Data Center Practice Manager for Sirius Federal
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