Converged Infrastructure...

This figure is from HP and John Wiley & Sons, and represents the complexities that Siloed IT creates.

Let us consider a fictitious company XYX, Inc., which is into Product Development. To make matters simple, let us assume the Company’s IT division uses SAP, Remedy for case management, an online store to market its product; For actual product development, the company uses JSP/.NET which is integrated to its SAP CRM module; it also let us say doesn’t use the SAP HR module and employs PeopleSoft. Then there are two more tools – JIRA for defect management and HP Quality Centre for Test Management.

In all, these are the applications:

·         SAP

·         Remedy

·         Online Store

·         Web Application to interact with SAP CRM

·         PeopleSoft

·         JIRA

·         HP QC

Now, for all these applications, we will need appropriate infrastructure to host them (Physical/virtual Servers, Storage/private public cloud, Networking, Security, Power, etc.). In a typical organization not focusing on infra optimization, typically the above workflow applies for each application. So, every demand for infrastructure goes thru the above process, which can take from weeks to months for a single deployment & commissioning. This should be okay for small organizations with limited software setup and infra needs, although the fact that each set up will be a silo in itself without having the ability to talk to another system is crippling. Also appreciate the fact that, it is not uncommon to see multiple versions of the same tool across different business units. Eventually you have siloed systems spawning even more complexity as the need multiplies, resulting in what is called an IT Sprawl.  

The downside of self-contained infra setups is the enormous duplication of work across business units for the system support and upkeep.

This is where converged infrastructure comes into picture. In this scenario, these entire infrastructures - (Physical/virtual Servers, Storage, Networking, Security, Power, etc.) are integrated with the primary objective of sharing and interoperability. For example, if you have a storage server for HP QC and JIRA having several gigs of space at disposal, you could use it for other application.

Converged infrastructure advances the Shared Services Model by emphasising the need for common processes, human resources.

Read in detail about Shared Infrastructure Here – HP Converged Infrastructure for Dummies.