ESG Blogs

IT organizations are continuously looking for new ways to drive operational and cost efficiencies and the data center is no exception. Data center staff want to take advantage of the benefits of a subscription-based cloud consumption model, but often don’t have the ability or budget to move their data or compute resources to the cloud. As a result, IT leaders are looking for ways to leverage resource consumption in a pay-as-you-go cloud model but within an on-premises infrastructure.

June is proving to be a busy month in the tech world. Cisco is no exception and has announced a new launch within their portfolio. I had the opportunity to attend Cisco’s Future Cloud event, and I am providing my summary of Cisco's future direction. They focused on innovation in these main areas:

• Extending observability and automation
• Everything as-a-service
• Accelerating hybrid cloud operations

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending an analyst briefing with Ben Bolles, Vice President of Products; and Mike Koponen, Senior Director, Product Marketing and Strategic Alliances, at Pivot3 discussing their latest launch. It was interesting to see the advances in the hyperconverged infrastructure space and the differentiation Pivot3 is bringing to market.

When we look at Pivot3’s core areas, it is clear they are competing in a large market, but they keep the focus on video surveillance. This is a market segment that is clearly gaining adoption, not only at the data center core but also at the edge and in the cloud.

IBM Think! 2021 delivered a number of areas IT leaders may want to consider with new and existing initiatives and infrastructure deployments. This year’s event amplified the importance of growth in artificial intelligence as it relates to IBM Cloud Pak, digital transformation and digital business models, IBM Watson Orchestrate self-service automation, public and hybrid cloud, and application and infrastructure modernization, to say the least. Our research at ESG aligns nicely to the messages IBM delivered this year. Listen as Mark Peters, ESG Practice Director; Scott Sinclair, ESG Senior Analyst; Mike Leone, ESG Senior Analyst, and I discuss and share our thoughts on this year’s IBM Think! 2021 event.

The focus at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2021 demonstrated that containers and Kubernetes is growing up—fast! The adoption of Kubernetes and its overall business impact, along with how the growth of applications and cloud adoption expands beyond the developer, was a key message at the event. Kubernetes has been ready and is expanding its presence in the overall business ecosystem, with deployments both in the cloud and at the edge.

When digital initiatives evolve in the data center, so too should your ability to choose how you consume IT resources. The desire to move to the cloud has some IT leaders intrigued, yet they continue to look into ways to maximize their existing IT investment and bridge the gap to get to the cloud. This has many IT leaders not moving to the cloud just yet but preferring to buy infrastructure via a consumption-based model such as a monthly subscription based on resource utilization for their on-premises data center.

IBM’s Eric Herzog, Chief Evangelist and Vice President of Worldwide Storage Channels, briefed us at ESG on the recent IBM Storage announcement launch focused on modernization infrastructure for the edge, core, and hybrid cloud. This post will cover key elements in this launch where IBM’s focus is on Spectrum Fusion HCI and the importance of edge, core, and hybrid cloud as well as simplifying Red Hat OpenShift and Kubernetes.

The way we interact with content is changing; however, the systems that contain the data are also evolving. Historically, the approach to connecting with businesses was through a website and web pages, often from a laptop. Now, the interaction is much more dynamic. But interaction with web content is only part of the story. Businesses connecting with their customers often require multiple ways of engagement. This can be through a web page, but also through mobile, tablets, watches, and other IoT devices such as beacons. Obviously, the shift of data distribution has evolved and the delivery of content also needs to evolve.

Join me and Scott Sinclair as we speak in this latest 3-minute video about the impact of digital transformation on IT infrastructure, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), and the state of artificial intelligence.

In March 2021, Lenovo announced new offerings that provide new ways for clients to accelerate computing with their Lenovo TruScale Services, which enables flexible consumption of server resources. The purpose of this launch was to accelerate real-time insights from the edge to the cloud; incorporate eighteen new ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile systems in the portfolio by expanding AMD’s family of third generation EPYC microprocessors, including eight new ThinkSystem V2 servers updated with third generation Intel Xeon scalable processors; and deliver ready-to-deploy analytics and AI offerings with SAS edge analytics, city security AI with Addfor, and scalable machine learning with cnvrg.io.