What do you do when you need to scale your data center infrastructure, but you don't have time to manage additional hardware or budget for additional staff?

It boils down to systems simplicity and operational efficiency, which are the hallmarks of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions like Cisco HyperFlex. Not only does HyperFlex help modernize a data center, it also enables infrastructure expansion without increasing your operational burden.

IDC, which conducted a business value study of HyperFlex, says this is because of the platform's ability to:

• Collapse silos of storage, compute, and data management services down to a cluster of x86 servers that can be deployed, managed, and supported as a single system
• Support IT organizational transformation through consolidation of roles that are focused on virtualization, compute, and storage at the generalist level
• Reduce the need to deploy different types of siloed infrastructure within the data center, including data efficiency and data protection solutions

Countless companies are taking advantage of these benefits. European energy conglomerate E.ON, for example, more than doubled the size of its data center infrastructure in response to ongoing business and data growth. They did so without adding more team members. And the infrastructure is being shared across four E.ON subsidiaries.

"We love HyperFlex," said Benjamin Bubbers, network administrator for Schleswig-Holstein Netz AG, the E.ON subsidiary responsible for the shared infrastructure. "Managing ten clusters is the same as managing four of them."

According to the IDC study, teams that deploy HyperFlex:

• Reduce operational costs by 50%
• Increase operational efficiency by 71%
• Accelerate server deployments by 93%
• Attain a five-year ROI of 452%

To learn more about E.ON's shared infrastructure, which is being simultaneously expanded and consolidated, read the full case study.

Resources

• Cloud and compute customer stories
• Cisco data center and hybrid cloud solutions