As cloud models continue to evolve and proliferate, managing the network becomes an increasingly complex task. To meet their needs, many organizations are deploying not just one monolithic “cloud,” but multiple clouds with greater flexibility and focus.
The adaptability of multiple clouds is essential in the modern digital/mobile economy. However, greater complexity in the network means more management challenges for IT.
That’s where the concept of a unified management platform comes in. A unified management platform helps data center professionals by integrating the network into a single dashboard of information from multiple data storage and compute sources. This eliminates the necessity for disparate management consoles for cloud deployments because everything can be monitored and managed from a single hypervisor.
Data is entering enterprise networks from a greater variety of sources than ever – the Internet, mobile devices based on different Operating Systems, the Internet of Things, and more. This flood of data makes effective data storage and data management increasingly vital. And in a digital economy where decisions often must be made in real time, a unified management platform delivers numerous competitive advantages.
Unified management platforms offer data center professionals a level of transparency and control that is exceedingly difficult to achieve using multiple management dashboards and tools. By providing IT pros with a comprehensive view of the data center’s various physical and virtual resources – including on-premise servers, private clouds, public clouds, and hybrid clouds – unified management platforms reduce complexity and risk.
Unified management platforms also allow for greater agility and scalability in data centers by enabling IT to consolidate servers and automate processes, both of which can reduce operational and maintenance costs.
For example, data center professionals using a unified management platform can schedule IT processes and automate network provisioning in a way that optimizes resources to meet demand. In a customer-facing data center (such as one run by an online retailer), that could mean the difference between successful transaction and a sale lost to latency.
However, unified management platforms are only effective if they can be integrated with all other components of an enterprise’s data storage operation. That’s why it’s important for data center professionals considering a unified management platform to make sure they work with an experienced vendor whose solution meets their integration needs.
The right unified management platform gives data center professionals a powerful tool that makes their data “management” job easier, thus liberating resources (both computing and personnel) to focus on meeting strategic business goals.
