Hyperconverged is the new engine for future data centre

Disruption is unavoidable in this day and age of digitisation. Today, it is no longer a matter of ‘if’, but rather - ‘when’ your organisation will be disrupted. The cloud is now revolutionising how businesses operate and workers collaborate. There is also a tidal wave of data, with billions of devices and people interconnected via Internet of Things (IoT). Coupled with cognitive computing and analytics, these developments can be used to unearth new insights for business leaders. The myriad of changes have given rise to companies such as Uber and AirBnb, which have successfully disrupted their respective industries. 

To prepare for this eventuality, organisations need to rethink their IT strategy. Only so can they truly harness the full potential of digitisation. To keep up with an increasingly digital world, IT systems will also need to be smarter, more agile and reliable.

Hyperconverged for true one-box solution

The intelligence of a system has always been determined by the software that runs it, which can be lacking for existing offerings based on a three-tier architecture. The systems were static in their behavior, as their firmware was “fixed” and difficult to upgrade and manage.

Hyperconverged technology changes this entirely, by integrating storage, compute, and hypervisor together into a single system. All these sub-systems can be easily managed leveraging a single software, which delivers everything that you would need from an IT system.

Besides integration, hyperconverged systems provide a higher degree of flexibility which seamlessly link businesses with IT like never before. This significantly enhances organisations’ agility and resilience while reducing operating costs. Major benefits include:

** A pay-as-you-grow (linear scaling) model for all your IT needs
** ‘Per virtual machine’ pricing model for public and private clouds
** Ability to address ever-changing business needs and environment with elastic application performance
** Self-healing capability that automatically look after unplanned failures without affecting users
** Easy integration with open standard-based IT systems for a ‘single pane of glass’ management

The above benefits may have triggered great demand for hyperconverged systems. According to Gartner[1], this market is expected to grow as much as 13 times by 2019. To capitalise on this opportunity, we have developed the Lenovo Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) - a turnkey, one-box solution that incorporates compute, storage and networking.

Pushing the boundaries of hyperconverged

The Lenovo Converged HX Series has also seen an explosive growth in demand -thanks to its high level of differentiation. This is due to tighter software integration and better performance than the competition, as illustrated by the following accolades from independent research and consulting firms:  

Leading virtualisation performance

Lenovo HX is the fastest two-socket, x86-based virtualisation system, validated by the industry-recognised SPECvirt_sc2013 benchmark. It has garnered world records for ‘Server Performance Per Watt’, and ‘Total System (including storage) Performance Per Watt’.

Leading reliability

Lenovo HX offers the highest overall uptime and availability among all x86-based systems on the market, with the majority (61%) achieving 99.9%, 37% at 99.99% and 2% at 99.999% availability. These were the findings of a 2016 report released by Information Technology Intelligence Consulting.

Leading customer satisfaction

Lenovo finished ahead of all its competitors for every attribute, from planning to evaluation and implementation. This is the key takeaway from the Technology Business Research’s Corporate IT Buying Behaviour and Customer Satisfaction for x86-based servers.

At Lenovo, we never stand still and are constantly innovating to give our customers the best-in-class solutions, co-developed with the leading technology providers and extensively tested by our experts:

** Lenovo is the only original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to offer management of hardware tasks for PRISM, VMware vCenter, and Microsoft System Centre
** Our alliance with Nutanix ensures industry-leading professional service and support
** We are the only OEM vendor with a complete SAP-certified HANA solution which is “SAN-less”, eliminating the need for costly enterprise shared storage.

Making the switch to hyperconverged

Digitisation is rapidly reshaping our world and the business landscape. Its impact is evident everywhere we go - just think about devices like connected cars and collaborative robots (cobots) in smart factories. Organisations cannot afford to be laggards, while their competitors embrace new technologies like hyperconverged. 

Hyperconverged systems are going to be the growth driver for businesses, and an important engine for future data centres (DCs). Lenovo with our end-to-end portfolio of services and solutions, as well as a rich heritage in the DC space, is well poised to help organisations accelerate their digitisation journey. Time is of the essence, and the earlier you embark on this journey, the better.