What is HPE GreenLake?
According to IDC, by 2020, consumption-based procurement in data centers will account for as much as 40% of enterprises’ IT infrastructure spending. Businesses today expect rapid access to resources that allow them to pay for only what they use. This allows businesses to not only be competitive in today’s market but economical as well.
Introducing HPE GreenLake which provides enterprise customers with a compelling value proposition of a consumption-based IT model and the comfort of managed services. It gives a company exactly what it needs and when it needs it. It is a suite of curated solutions that deliver IT outcomes with hardware, software, and expertise on premises. Payment is simple and based on a single pay-per-usage metric that is relevant to the particular solution and your business.
Five Reasons to Love HPE GreenLake
CRN recently shared five reasons to look into HPE GreenLake:
- Eliminating Over Provisioning: The average customer utilization rate for IT is 45% which means 55% of assets are not being used. Customers are buying excess compute, storage or networking capacity for on premises solutions. Customers who have adopted the GreenLake model on average are seeing a 22 – 30 percent cash flow savings.
- Provides Detailed Consumption Data: Critical data is being collected via HPE’s “consumption manager”. This gives detailed analysis on what is being consumed, who is consuming it and what trends may be for the future.
- Speeds Up IT Provisioning: There is no more waiting period to buy and provision new IT on premises solutions. The solution works to figure out what the work requirements really are, deploys that and buffers it for the client.
- Metering Advantage: Using the Cloud Cruiser tool, GreenLake can meter down to the core, Gbyte, or VM or in any way the customer wants. A portal is provided that shows detailed consumption metering. This data can be tracked by project, business unit or external customer. This allows for a more detailed financial background check on each and every IT service.
- Capex or Opex: Customer has the choice of how financially they would like to focus their work service contract. A company may be focused on EBITDA where they prefer to depreciate IT asses in a capital expenditure deal. Or a company may want to focus on freeing up cash to use elsewhere. The client has the option to decide what matters to them: Capex or Opex.
There are quite a few HPE GreenLake packages available including Hybrid Cloud, Backup, SAP HANA, Database EDB Postgres and Big Data. Zunesis and HPE would work with your business to find out what package is the most beneficial for your organization.
Why Consumption Based IT?
Many companies and organizations are looking to take the advantage of more of a hybrid environment where they can use the advantages of the public cloud while having the option to run workloads on premises. Businesses are moving away from capital-intensive models to more of a consumption-based approach where they can be more agile and save money and IT resources.
Here are three reasons why a Consumption Based Approach may make your IT more efficient.
- Improve IT Operations: IT admin and operations staff are bogged down with the tasks of software updates and/or troubleshooting technology problems. By having a vendor that takes over these tedious tasks on a monthly basis via a consumption model, this frees up time for the IT to focus on projects that actually help a business generate revenue.
- Understanding Where to Place Workloads: 40 percent of organizations with public cloud experience have moved workloads off of the cloud and back to their on-premises setups. Moving these workloads can cause additional costs, dealing with a reduced size of their IT footprint and other unexpected problems. A consumption-based IT model can help set up an IT solution within a quicker time frame. The business is only paying for they used so you don’t overspend. The vendor also helps determine the best place to locate each of the workloads.
- Capacity Planning: 451 Research found that 59 percent of enterprises wait three months or longer for new capacity to come online. 50 percent of enterprises typically suffered downtime as well due to poor capacity planning. With a pay-as-you-go approach, an IT provider works to determine a business’ current capacity needs and continually plans for future capacity requirements.
Is HPE GreenLake and a Consumption Based IT Approach a fit for your business or organization? Contact Zunesis to do an assessment of your current infrastructure to determine what may work best for your needs.
Over the past decade, we have seen Microsoft evolve from the company that makes Windows to one of the top three tech giants, and the second largest cloud services provider behind only Amazon. While Microsoft has been a giant in the industry since the 80’s and 90’s, market share for their Windows operating system has been steadily declining during the rise of mobile devices.
Android and Apple have been slowly taking over the market and edging Microsoft out after a long string of flops. From Groove music, to the Windows phone, Microsoft has been releasing a series of not so great products that get overshadowed by others, and eventually phased out. There is one space they have been excelling in, cloud.
Focusing on the Cloud
With the success of Office 365 and Azure, it’s no surprise that Microsoft is shifting their focus to the cloud. It’s also no surprise that they are shifting the focus of their flagship product to be more in line with their current successes. There have been some major shakeups within the company over the last few years, one of which is to move the Windows operating system operations to the cloud division. Another act that solidifies Microsoft’s intent to bring Windows to the cloud.
Windows Virtual Desktop
Enter Windows Virtual Desktop. The newest iteration of Windows 10 is offered as a remote virtual desktop run in Azure and is accessible from anywhere. Just like every other cloud product MS offers, this means it will always be up to date. No more Windows updates restarting your computer at the most inconvenient times.
The biggest upside of Windows Virtual Desktop will definitely be its impact on IT departments. The fully virtualized OS will bring a lot of benefits with it that were previously only realized through server-based virtualization, which is costly and complicated.
Benefits of Windows Virtual Desktop
- Virtual Desktops will be able to share resources with other Virtual desktops
- Centrally managed through Azure
- Accessible from anywhere, eliminating a lot of networking headaches
- IT departments will be able to deploy new desktops easily and quickly while hardly needing to touch any actual hardware, making it scalable to meet the needs of any company.
- Built in Security and Compliance. Taking a load off any monitoring and protection software
The new virtual desktop will be bundled with Office 365, which will cut costs and ensure companies have everything they need to run in the cloud. The operating system runs on a pay-as-you-go model that Microsoft uses with most of its products.
There are several tiers of this model. Starting with the standard pay-as-you-go, where you can increase compute capacity and storage to fit your needs. You only pay for the virtual machines while they are on. There is also the option to reserve VM instances, which is a fixed price for the VM’s whether they are running or not. While still flexible, this requires a commitment for a length of time.
Redefining the Operating System
In an age of mobile devices, Microsoft is trying to redefine the operating system. They are taking it from a single-device system, to a multi device one. This will allow you to access the same desktop from any device, making it truly mobile.
Though it’s clear that Microsoft has been focusing on other projects, they aren’t leaving Windows by the wayside. The Windows Virtual Desktop may be more suited for business use, but it is a pretty clear indicator of where they want to OS to be in the future. There have been rumors that the next version of Windows will be the last. A single version of Windows that will continue to evolve, but you won’t need to upgrade to the next iteration.
Microsoft isn’t afraid to admit it’s made a few missteps in the last decade, like Windows 8 or the Windows phone. They know where they excel, and the focus has been shifted to cloud. Windows will be another addition to Microsoft’s suite of cloud services, bringing it into the future with the rest of the products that brought about Microsoft’s rise to the top. For almost its entire existence Microsoft has been known for Windows, but times are changing. Windows virtual desktop is a big step towards keeping Windows relevant in the future.
Though not a new phenomenon, ransomware has made some serious headlines this week.
With the recent wave of Ransomware attacks, it is becoming increasingly important for organizations to protect themselves and their sensitive data.
There are different types of ransomware. They can target any PC users – whether it’s a home computer, endpoints in an enterprise network, or servers used by a government agency or healthcare provider.
Ransomware can:
- Prevent you from accessing Windows,
- Encrypt files so you can’t use them,
- Stop certain apps from running (like your web browser).
Ransomware will demand that you pay money (a “ransom”) to get access to your PC or files. However, there is no guarantee that paying the fine or doing what the ransomware tells you will give access to your PC or files again.
Microsoft provides a complete portfolio of Cloud services to protect your data from these types of attacks. One of our specialties is helping customers transition from on premise to either hybrid or full cloud environments. Often, customers just do not know where to start. We have a complimentary assessment that can establish the basics called a “Cloud Migration Health Check,” by which we can provide you with a report outlining current on premises investments compared to what those same investments would cost in the cloud, highlighting cost savings in the process.
In light of this week’s events, (WannaCry), would it be worth a few minutes of your time to review your current environment and projects to see if Microsoft Cloud and Microsoft Office 365 & Azure would be a good fit for your organization?
Please contact us to learn more on how Microsoft dedicated Office 365 and Azure: Storage, Backup, and Disaster Recovery solutions can help optimize and protect your IT investments.
Beyond The Role of Reseller and Implementer
In the past 10 years, the evolution of technology has continued to accelerate every year at a dizzying pace. It is now more challenging than ever before for IT leaders to develop and implement technology strategies for their organizations without the help of outside resources.
There are simply too many variables and solution options; and the speed with which technologies change can create confusion, delayed decision making, and, consequently, cause delays for important projects. Utilization of outside resources to assist with implementation has been at the core of services offered by Zunesis for over 12 years. But, during this time, we have also provided many of our customers formal, vendor-neutral Assessment and Strategy Development consulting services.
If you are responsible for managing IT architecture direction for your company, you have far more variables to consider than at any time before. Here are a few of the variables you need to factor into your planning:
Virtualization
- What Hypervisor will you use?
- Will you begin utilizing Converged solutions?
- Will you virtualize all workloads? How will you decide?
Storage
- What type of storage will you deploy? Locally attached, centralized/shared storage using Fibre Channel and iSCSI?
- Will you use All Flash or Hybrid?
- Will you separate storage by workload?
- Will you utilize cloud storage?
- Will you provide storage through Converged or Hyper Converged solutions?
- How will you protect your storage infrastructure?
- How do you ensure a storage infrastructure that will meet performance demands? How will that scale?
Networking
- Will you maintain a physical network infrastructure or begin utilizing some form of software defined networking solution?
- How will you provide security across your network?
Availability
- How will you provide availability for your virtualized infrastructure?
- How will you protect your data?
- Are there SLA’s that need to be met? Are these well-defined? Do you know the RPO/RTO requirements for your organization?
- Do you provide a separate protection strategy for your data and virtual machines?
Cloud
- How does Cloud fit into your strategy?
- What workloads will be appropriate in the cloud?
- How will you migrate workloads to the Cloud?
- Will cloud be part of your disaster recovery strategy?
The questions listed above are very familiar to today’s IT leader. And, in fact, they represent only part of all that needs to be considered when developing your IT infrastructure strategies. These questions, and the path to getting them answered, is also familiar to your technical team at Zunesis. As a Solution Provider and Value Added Reseller for over 12 years, we’ve seen the industry through many transformations. And with Account Managers and Technical personnel having decades of experience, Zunesis has been involved with every aspect of IT Infrastructure design, implementation, and support.
But beyond the technical expertise, Zunesis makes it our mission to be an advocate for our customer, apart from representing the manufacturer and software vendor solutions we sell. It is our level of experience and our Customer First belief that qualifies us to help our clients define their IT strategies, not just act as a reseller and implementer.
While many of the challenges faced by you as an IT leader are common, we know that you have unique requirements when it comes to how we can best help you meet those challenges. Over the years our independent consulting services have taken many forms. Here are just a few of the types of consulting services we have delivered:
- Detailed documentation of existing IT Infrastructure. This documentation is often used to begin the process of evaluating future strategy.
- Performance assessments for storage, networking, and compute. In addition to documentation of the performance data, these assessments include infrastructure documentation and recommendations for improvement if performance problems are identified.
- IT Infrastructure Assessments. These are our most comprehensive offering and help define where you are, where you want to go, and recommendations for getting there. Our assessments include:
- Infrastructure documentation
- Documentation of goals/objectives
- Stakeholder discovery sessions
- Recommendations
- Implementation Roadmaps
- Backup and Disaster Recovery planning
- Request for Proposal and Request for Quote development
- Data Classification Assessments
The services listed above don’t replace the role of an IT leader in an organization, rather, they are designed to help organize the information required for you to make better informed decisions. Bringing in an outside resource, with experience across many technologies, is your way to enhance your own process and help you successfully define and implement your IT strategies.
