Logicalis US Explores What CEOs, CFOs and Line-of-Business Leaders Want Most from IT

NEW YORK, Sept. 29, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- There's a transformation taking place in data centers all across America today, and every IT department will find itself in a different place along this journey. The ultimate goal is for corporate IT organizations to become brokers of technology services that meet the needs and expectations of their organizations' users by delivering IT with the same speed and agility they expect – and get – in their outside-of-work consumer lives. As nearly every enterprise CIO will attest, however, that's easier said than done. Becoming a service-defined enterprise requires first transforming the corporate data center into a software-defined data center (SDDC) that relies more heavily on software operation and management than hardware resources to deliver IT applications and services on demand. And according to Logicalis US, an international IT solutions and managed services provider (www.us.logicalis.com), the SDDC begins with going back to the basics of virtualization and the development of a converged infrastructure.

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"With solutions like VMware vCenter Operations Manager and HP's ConvergedSystem for Virtualization, IT organizations can begin to implement the changes they need to transform their manually operated, siloed data centers into integrated, automated solutions that open doors to the software-defined data center, more effective cloud computing, and ultimately to becoming a service-defined enterprise," says Steve Eroskey, HP Business Development Director, Logicalis US. "Once they've accomplished this, they can become the services brokers their companies expect them to be, and they can spend more time and energy on technology goals that will directly translate to their companies' bottom lines. In the meantime, though, they need to get buy-in for this new infrastructure paradigm from all the business stakeholders. This is an issue that is more often a political or cultural issue than a monetary one."

The decision to implement a converged infrastructure (CI) and advance toward cloud computing and a service-defined IT infrastructure is not usually the result of the CEO or CFO wanting a virtualized environment and a software-defined data center. Rather, virtualization and CI are tools in the IT organization's toolkit that provide a means to an end – they are the road to follow along the CIO's journey toward better service delivery and more satisfied end customers. To rally support for the implementation of these technology changes, the CIO has to address each stakeholder's individual and very different needs. The IT department can no longer afford to talk only in speeds and feeds, but the CIO and other IT team members must rally support by becoming business problem solvers and addressing what matters most to each stakeholder.

What Business Stakeholders Want
CIOs are under tremendous pressure to be more responsive to the needs of the business. The CFO is pressuring them to do more with a smaller budget. The CEO wants things done faster. And line-of-business users want on-demand technology at their fingertips. Virtualization and a converged infrastructure can help provide all of this, but the savvy CIO has to first learn how to have the right conversation to garner support and money to implement these changes.

1. CEO: Most CEOs are looking at future opportunities to generate revenue and meet income goals. A CI solution can put the IT department in a position to help them do that by speeding response times to emerging business opportunities and demands; using CI to simplify IT spends by offering servers, network, storage and management in a single solution; and lowering risk by providing a tested and proven virtualized platform that is fully supported by a single provider.
2. CFO: Responsible for developing and meeting corporate budgets, the CFO likes predictable costs and needs to be able to associate all costs with a specific source of income. For them, the biggest appeal of CI is that it can make IT spends more cyclical and predictable; set the foundation for leveraging public, private and hybrid cloud efficiencies; and enable costs to be linked to income sources so operating budgets can pay for specific IT services as they are used.
3. Line-of-Business Leaders: These are the folks on the front lines, often facing the competition head-on every day. They are looking for new opportunities to grow the business, and when they see one, they need the technology tools at their disposal that will help them act on those opportunities immediately. Here, CI helps pave the way for SDDC and the service-defined enterprise, which ultimately leads to an on-demand culture where line-of-business leaders can quite literally use a self-help service catalog for their requests and see their IT needs provisioned and fulfilled in days instead of weeks or months. That means a fully virtualized CI environment can help reduce the time it takes for these stakeholders to bring new products or services to market; it reduces outages and technical glitches that get in the way of their productivity; and it provides them with the flexibility they need to respond quickly to emerging opportunities, giving them peace of mind that the tools they need to succeed in their jobs are really just a few mouse clicks away.

Want to Learn More?

• Find out how virtualization and VMware solutions help set the foundation for the transformation to a software-defined data center, then explore the business benefits of a converged infrastructure as well as five ways CI can be a catalyst for change: http://ow.ly/SoNzU.
• Do you have a blueprint for IT transformation? Take this brief quiz to find out where your company stands along the IT Transformation Journey, then learn how to overcome internal barriers to a converged infrastructure strategy: http://ow.ly/SoLlu.
• Watch a brief video about the service-defined data center, then find out how Logicalis and partners like HP can help make the SDDC and service-defined enterprise a reality: http://ow.ly/SoRIw.

About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international IT solutions and managed services provider with a breadth of knowledge and expertise in communications and collaboration; data center and cloud services; and managed services.

Logicalis employs over 4,000 people worldwide, including highly trained service specialists who design, deploy and manage complex IT infrastructures to meet the needs of over 6,500 corporate and public sector customers. To achieve this, Logicalis maintains strong partnerships with technology leaders such as Cisco, HP, IBM, EMC, NetApp, Microsoft, VMware and ServiceNow on an international basis. It has specialized solutions for enterprise and medium-sized companies in vertical markets covering financial services, TMT (telecommunications, media and technology), education, healthcare, retail, government, manufacturing and professional services, helping customers benefit from cutting-edge technologies in a cost-effective way.

The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of over $1.5 billion from operations in Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia Pacific and is one of the leading IT and communications solution integrators specializing in the areas of advanced technologies and services.

The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec Limited, listed on the Johannesburg and London AIM Stock Exchanges, with revenues of over $6 billion.

For more information, visit www.us.logicalis.com.

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Media contacts:
Lisa Dreher, VP, Marketing & Business Development,
Logicalis US
[email protected]
425-201-8111
www.us.logicalis.com

Karen Franse, Communication Strategy Group for Logicalis US
[email protected]
866-997-2424
www.gocsg.com

SOURCE Logicalis US

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