The adoption of hybrid cloud, an organization’s mixing of public and private cloud services, has long been a talking point for companies of all sizes.
There’s little doubt that the hybrid cloud presents an appealing proposition for IT leaders: the elastic, pay-as-you-go features of the public cloud combined with private cloud-style management of the hardware and software that handle your most timely and intensive workloads.
Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, goes as far as to argue that, in the long run, evolving a hybrid cloud is the only viable option for many enterprises. Even where organizations have shaken off any lingering reluctance to move their IT infrastructure to the public cloud, the laws of physics simply won’t allow companies to position all their computing remotely. For super-fast, data-intensive workloads that require near real-time response, compute often needs to live in proximity to its source. The programs won’t work quickly enough otherwise.
So developing a hybrid cloud may ultimately prove the end game for most organizations. However, unlike the public cloud where you’re renting the service not purchasing the machine, private cloud involves purchasing (or leasing) hardware. And figuring out how to optimally deploy the hardware that is under your control remains a complex task.
Here are five considerations for hardware asset management when navigating the complexities of the hybrid cloud.
1 Review Your IT Strategy
For many companies nowadays, IT is a core driver of business growth: well-designed and well-deployed IT infrastructure sets the conditions for success. Your company’s CIO knows this too well.
To better help your business advance and avoid getting mired in the sea of hardware options, first take a step back and ask yourself the following:
- What’s your company’s plan for digital transformation, and how is it managing IT to support its digital transformation goals?
- What’s your company’s strategy for moving workloads into public (and private) clouds?
- What’s the plan for the IT infrastructure that you retain on-prem?
- What’s your company’s approach to setting hardware budgets?
Once you have these strategic and operational realities clearly in mind, you’re in a stronger position to contribute confidently to the decisions your company takes to hardware lifecycle management.
2 Know Your Hardware Assets
You can’t manage something that you can’t measure. Accurate information about the hardware under your company’s control is critical in this regard.
How easy is it to access your current inventory of hardware? Does your IT asset management database easily yield the answers you need? Drill down into the available data to understand:
- The range of computer hardware assets in deployment
- The number of units for each hardware type according to serial number
- The status of the asset and how long it has been in operation
- Which business function(s) it serves
In addition to the hardware your company owns, what about the hardware you lease as part of a hardware-as-a-service arrangement with a managed service provider or through an enterprise vendor? What additional capacity does this technology give you? And what performance insights can you draw from its deployment in the business environment?
Make sure you understand the contractual conditions of the hardware lease. What are the buy-out terms should you wish to end the contract early, and what is the responsibility of the MSP for updating security features, attending to repairs, and refreshing equipment?
Develop an understanding of where the hardware lives. How much is in regional or branch offices as opposed to centralized data centers, and what is the breakdown between on-premise hardware and that residing in colocation, a growing section of the market as hyperscale operators drive demand for additional data center capacity and enterprises seek access to modern IT facilities.
For any colo capacity you possess, know the precise terms of the arrangement with the colocation provider. What is the extent of the colo’s responsibility for housing your hardware, and what’s yours? What are the security protocols for gaining access to your hardware? What level of responsibility does the colo have for maintaining your equipment? And what additional cloud-style services might they offer for getting the most out of your IT infrastructure?
3 Plan For Storage Hardware
Data is the fuel that drives so much of today’s commercial environment. And while the public cloud is widely used by organizations for a raft of applications such as machine learning and data recovery, it is unlikely you will want to crunch all of your work and house all of your data remotely.
And even when you decide to migrate data to the cloud, the idea of “lift and shift” is nowhere near as straightforward as it may sound. Data is complex, and so is its storage. For specialized, intensive workloads, traditional on-premise storage sometimes remains just what the doctor ordered. Building a private cloud may prove even better for ensuring ease of access to authorized users within the business environment.
Some data storage questions you should stay on top of include:
- What different places is your company’s data stored, and what rules are in place governing its storage?
- What are your company’s policies on data archiving? To what degree are these policies influenced by regulatory factors in your industry or region?
- How is data analysis advancing your company’s digital transformation goals?
There’s a lot of analysis required to arrive at working answers to these questions. Are you even generating the right data in the first place? Having deep pools of data does not in itself yield commercial insights. What different types of data will you need to capture and assess as your business evolves?
Then, what does this all mean from a hardware perspective? The emergence of higher-cap hard disk drives coupled with increasing storage densities for solid state devices will ensure a steady stream of options for upgrading. But at what point can you justifiably swap old storage for new while confidently lowering your TCO? How can you sensibly introduce new, advanced technologies into the enterprise storage mix for that portion of hardware you still directly control?
These are questions to work through as you get a handle on your storage hardware needs across your hybrid IT infrastructure.
4 Manage Hardware Assets Throughout The Entire Lifecycle
Remember: if you own it, it’s yours—for better and for worse. Hardware inevitably degrades in time. But the vast majority of enterprise hardware assets, managed effectively, will serve your organization longer and more cost effectively than you realize.
Of course, there will always be a case for deploying higher-cap, more powerful equipment for storage and compute. Your organization should adopt a growth mindset when assessing its budget for new hardware procurement, eager to explore new technologies and new configurations. Just think how emerging interconnect technologies such as NVMe-oF can unlock data retrieval and improve storage optimization in the increasingly interconnected data center. Or how emerging HDD technologies such as SMR and HAMR can improve your TCO. Experimenting with innovation is your cutting edge.
But don’t forget all of the other machines in deployment that still have, on average, much life ahead of them. They are your workhorses, and your company will benefit from taking a proactive and progressive approach to their hardware lifecycle management. That means understanding and tracking your hardware closely from initial procurement and testing through mainstream deployment and eventual retirement:
- How often do you performance test your server and storage hardware?
- What expectations for lifecycle performance do you have for each asset model?
- What percentage of each asset model gets returned within warranty?
- What’s your organization’s process for managing SLAs?
- What are your policies around data sanitization when repurposing storage assets for new workloads?
Comprehensively document your process around hardware lifecycle management as part of your company policies.
5 Maximize Value Recovery
When it’s time to retire an IT asset, make sure to maximize the asset’s value prior to disposal. Find an IT asset recovery partner that can assist you in not only securely sanitizing storage media but returning funds to your IT budget.
Work with a trusted partner who can demonstrate rigorous process in the handling and remarketing of end-of-use data center hardware as the same time as providing extensive industry knowledge. Planning for remarketing and, when necessary, disposal are key elements of a comprehensive approach to hardware lifecycle management.
The same applies for the excess inventory on your shelves and loading bays. Engage a partner who can not only help audit your inventory but make value-driven recommendations and action them on your behalf.
Are You Riding The Wave?
We’re in a Cambrian explosion of technical innovation. New solutions and new approaches, manifested in hardware and the software that controls it, are emerging at lightning speed. Just witness the shock of flash-based innovations flooding the market.
Organizations understand the stakes and are caught up in a technical spending cycle that shows no sign of abating. Industry leaders such as Gelsinger’s VMware are sharply aware of the opportunity, announcing a steady stream of partnerships with cloud service providers, from AWS back in 2016 to the more recent announcement that Google Cloud will support VMware workloads. Gelsinger’s vision, what his company dubs the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC), is to provide “a seamless hybrid service” by allowing companies to run the same software on-premises as in the cloud. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who owns the hardware.
For their part, the hyperscalers are intent on bringing cloud infrastructure and hardware into the enterprise data center wherever it makes sense, with services such as AWS Outposts and Google Cloud Anthos taking the challenge to Microsoft Azure Stack (as well as Dell-owned VMware) and upping the hybrid ante.
Corporate spending on the public cloud will continue to grow, but the parallel development of private cloud capabilities is unlikely to slow down any time soon. Who doesn’t want to have the best of both worlds when it comes to hardware asset management?
Reach out to Horizon today for expert advice on how to advance your technology goals by maximizing your enterprise hardware investment.
