Last week I had a speech at a small workshop in Italy around hyper-convergence. It was a group of more than 20 end users, mid-to-large sized companies that were evaluating if hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) makes sense for their projects. In fact, only a few of them are already utilizing hyper-convergence, and some have special use cases for which solutions they have evaluated so far are too expensive or not flexible enough for their needs. Edge computing, for example, is pretty challenging for most HCI solutions.
That was an interesting discussion and I’m trying to take advantage of it for the slide deck I’m preparing for a webinar I’ll host next week here on GigaOm: “Hyper-Converged Infrastructure: Maximizing TCO and ROI”
I’m focusing the presentation on a few aspects that I consider fundamental to choose the right HCI solution:
- One-size-fits-all does not exist when it comes to IT infrastructures. It is important to understand your real needs and proceed accordingly.
- HCI is good for many workloads, but not for everything. An analysis of your needs (aka workloads) is fundamental to reach the right combination of functionality, efficiency, and cost in a solution that can effectively support the business.
- Some of the benefits of HCI when compared to traditional infrastructures and the questions you should ask vendors when starting the evaluation process.
I’m oversimplifying a little here, but we will have an hour to go deep, and I’ll be joined by an HCI end user that will share how he made his evaluations, his experience with HCI and his expectations for the future. The session will be interactive, will include a few polls with results shared at the end of the webinar, and a Q&A session. And we will continue the conversation on social media later on Twitter and LinkedIn.
The research work I’m doing around HCI is also contributing to the publication of a new report about the key criteria for evaluating HCI. This upcoming report is part of a series of reports I’m writing to help end users identify the best infrastructure solutions for their needs. Stay tuned and watch GigaOm for these upcoming reports, the first of which is coming soon.
If you are interested in learning more about HCI and would like to better understand how to find the solution that can bring to your organization the best TCO (total cost of ownership) and the quickest ROI (return on investment), join us on May 23. Sign up to attend the webinar here!