Briefings Direct

Find the podcast on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: HP.

This podcast explores some major news the HP Discover 2011 conference in Las Vegas around converged infrastructure and data center transformation.

Until fairly recently, large IT organizations were grappling with a lot of unknown unknowns when it comes to the rapidly shifting requirements for their infrastructure and facilities. There was a sizable risk of locking in too quickly or in adopting unproven technology -- and then paying a dear price later, either in wasted investments or ending up with insufficient resources.

But now, after a series of rapidly maturing trends around application types, cloud computing, mobility, and changing workforces, the proper IT requirements mix seems much clearer. In just the past few years, the definition of what a modern IT infrastructure needs and what it needs to do has finally come into focus. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

We know, for example, that we’ll see most data centers converge their servers, storage, and network platforms intelligently. We know that we’ll see higher levels of virtualization across these platforms and more applications, and that, in turn, will support the adoption of hybrid and cloud models.

In just the past few years, the definition of what a modern IT infrastructure needs and what it needs to do has finally come into focus.

We’ll surely see more compute resources devoted to big data and business intelligence (BI) values that span ever more applications and data types. And of course, we’ll need to support far more mobile devices and distributed, IT-savvy workers.

There is no longer a lot of risk in describing the quintessential data center of today and tomorrow and in recognizing that it will need to be highly energy efficient, automated, flexible, and modular. It will need to scale up and down and to adapt without complexity, delay, or undue waste.

How well companies modernize and transform these strategic and foundational IT resources will then hugely impact their success and managing their own agile growth and in controlling ongoing costs and margins. Indeed the mingling of IT success and business success is clearly inevitable.

So, now comes the actual journey. At HP Discover, the news is largely about making the inevitable future happen more safely by being able to transform the IT that supports businesses in all of their computing needs for the coming decade. IT executives must execute rapidly now to manage how the future impacts them and to make rapid change an opportunity, not an adversary.

How to execute

We've assembled a panel of HP executives to explore the how -- no longer dwelling on the why or when -- to best execute on converged infrastructure and data center transformation. Please join me now in welcoming our panel, Helen Tang, Solutions Lead for Data Center Transformation and Converged Infrastructure Solutions for HP Enterprise Business; Jon Mormile, Worldwide Product Marketing Manager for Performance-Optimized Data Centers in HP's Enterprise Storage Servers and Networking (ESSN) group within HP Enterprise Business; Jason Newton, Manager of Announcements and Events for HP ESSN, and Brad Parks, Converged Infrastructure Strategist for HP Storage in HP ESSN. The panel is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions

Find the podcast on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Read a full transcript or download a copy.