Smart storage solutions

Simplifying the data centre infrastructure, according to Juniper Networks’ Trevor Dearing.

CXO. What’s happened to the decentralised data centre model that everyone was adopting until now?
Trevor Dearing. After a decade or more of decentralised, distributed information systems, many organizations are realising that decentralisation often comes at the expense of efficiency and reliability. As a result, these organisations want to bring their distributed, decentralised systems back into a central data centre where they can take advantage of the latest advances in technology, such as WAN acceleration and virtualisation, to boost data production and improve enterprise-wide IT performance.

CXO. So what is driving this change?
TD. Actually, there are a number of trends that we’re seeing. These include data centre consolidation, support for server and desktop virtualisation, cloud computing, disaster recovery and business continuity and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). With these types of strategies, organisations are attempting to deliver acceptable application performance to their users as easily and as cost-effectively as possible. The benefits that can be derived have made the recentralisation and optimisation of data centre resources a very high priority for 2009.

CXO. If the benefits are that good, how easy is it for an organisation to undertake a re-think?
TD. Improving data centre performance isn’t as easy as it sounds. In fact, there are several factors that can make data centre performance improvements tricky to achieve; for example, growth, complexity, systems and software, security, disaster recovery and business continuity, and last but by not least, virtualisation. Of all these challenges, infrastructure complexity is perhaps the most significant. This is because complexity can hinder efforts to improve data centre performance and reduce costs – sometimes both.

CXO. So can you explain how complexity is the enemy of an efficient data centre?
TD. Growing complexity in the data centre slows application performance and delays the deployment of any new business-enabling applications the enterprise is looking to deploy, while also getting in the way of innovation. For example, to compete successfully, organisations must increase customer access to data and do so quickly, at low cost and with minimal risk to network security. Technology complexity, however, leads to inefficient use of infrastructure resources, higher operational costs, and increased security risks or downtime due to human error and network failures.

CXO. What about sustainability issues in the data centre – are they relevant in this discussion?
TD. Yes, absolutely. In many cases, organisations that are burdened by complexity in the data centre are also running out of power and space. That’s because many IT environments today suffer from ‘technology sprawl’ – the uncontrolled proliferation of servers, systems and devices – which adds yet more layers of overall complexity. Servers, systems and devices may run different operating systems and use different management tools, making them difficult to integrate. Technology sprawl reduces data centre performance and efficiency, which raises costs – another large concern for IT organisations as they want to cut data centre costs at the same time that they’re improving data centre performance.

CXO. So it’s fair to say that balancing lower cost with better performance is a big issue for IT managers in their data centre today?
TD. I think it’s fair to say that this is one of the primary concerns we hear from IT managers about the data centre – high performance with cost avoidance. Even if something improves data centre performance, they also need it to reduce operational costs. The current economic drivers are fuelling the need to cut costs and improve data centre performance. It is interesting to note that in addition to motivating IT organisations to search for ways to save money, they’re also motivating them to search for ways to make money: improved service delivery, increased productivity, streamlined processes through integration and consolidation, compliance, QoS-based services based on users, applications and systems.

CXO. What would your closing thoughts be on the data centre of the  
future?
TD. In the end, the same globalisation that fuels growth is forcing companies to improve data centre performance. And the best technology vehicle for achieving that is the highly-scalable, low-latency network.

Trevor Dearing is the head of enterprise marketing for Juniper in EMEA. He has worked in the telecoms industry for 23 years in a variety of roles. He began in R&D developing networking solutions for digital CO voice switches, and newly-invented Ethernet technology. His career then moved to a predominantly data networking focus.