Modern data centers contain the tools and assets that can power an enterprise in the digital age – but only if these tools (applications) and assets (data) can be accessed. However, when apps can’t be deployed or if data are siloed, an enterprise’s technology can become a competitive disadvantage.
The mobile and BYOD revolution, for example, theoretically allows employees to access data and apps from anywhere, thus enabling workers to be more productive and effective. But when mobile workers can’t access applications or enterprise data, it can have a big impact on productivity, flexibility, and revenue.
Employees suddenly may:
- Not be able to do their jobs efficiently (or at all)
- Be unable to collaborate remotely with colleagues and partners
- Need to go into headquarters or a branch office to work
- Lose potential sales in the field
All of these outcomes can have a negative impact on an enterprise’s bottom line, as can unscheduled downtime, problems securing virtualized workloads, inability to manage big data (including data from the Internet of Things), and poor server management.
This puts tremendous pressure on IT to solve data center problems as quickly as possible. Without proper tools, however, IT pros can waste valuable time trying to locate the source of an issue, whether it’s a user’s device, a wireless network, a branch server, an on-premises data center, or a cloud deployment. And when it comes to protracted problems in the data center, time costs money.
Rather than relying on guesswork and a disparate set of tools that each offer only limited transparency into the network, IT pros are better served by using infrastructure management tools that can be integrated with and extend existing tools for monitoring, provisioning, and configuring server and application software.
The ideal data center infrastructure relies on a single platform that unifies computing resources, networking infrastructure, data center management, and cloud deployments. Such a platform should enable IT professionals to automate and simplify management of the data center across servers, the network, and clouds.
Unified infrastructure management allows IT to monitor the health status of domains, automate and standardize network and data center access, and manage operating systems, applications and servers. A unified computing infrastructure also saves money by reducing the number of servers in the data center through virtualization and consolidation of heavily used Microsoft enterprise applications like SQL, SharePoint, and Exchange.
In the case of a mobile worker unsuccessfully trying to access an application, an automated solution within a unified infrastructure could detect the failed attempts, locate the source of failure, and resolve the problem, saving time and requiring little or no human intervention.
As newer technologies such as cloud computing and virtualization become integrated with legacy systems, data center management has become more complex than ever. Using tools such as Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS), along with Microsoft System Center and PowerShell, enterprises can simplify management, gain more transparency, identify and solve problems faster, scale to meet the needs of the business, and lower operating costs through greater efficiency.
Click here for more information on how Cisco can provide the optimal infrastructure for data centers and Microsoft environments.
