Analysts: the way forward for CIOs with data centers
What business analysts recommend — and why Runecast is the way forward for companies running VMware & AWS in the era of COVID-19.
Contents
Where we are now: Seeking answers
What leading business analysts recommend
Machine learning, AI, and remote monitoring/management automation software?
Overall business outcome for Runecast Analyzer users
I’m probably not alone in having signed up for more than a few webinars and reports related to the business impact of COVID-19. In the beginning, I read and watched (or at least listened to) these diligently, to learn as much as possible to help my team and our company adapt to an unprecedented situation. Naturally, our team got back into a steady (remote) workflow and there wasn’t enough time to keep up with these… so my inbox now has post-webinar links and PDF download reminders for a lot of “new developments”… all of which seem to echo a single mantra: UNCERTAINTY.
Where we are now: Seeking answers
Uncertainty is just a new term for an old constant, one previously referred to as volatility. As it’s also a common saying that “the only constant is change,” our mistake as leaders or as a society was in thinking that this change — the volatility, uncertainty, The Great Unknown, the Lord of Chaos, whatever we call it — was supposed to happen only in small increments or doses.
After the initial shock of a global pandemic begins to fade — partly a result of learning gradually a larger context (via comparisons, historical references that seek to find a precedent, quotes from earlier centuries that we can suddenly relate to with more feeling, etc.) — the evidence of people having sought answers during that time becomes clear.
‘Digital transformation’ vs. ‘business continuity’
For a brief moment in time — in the month of March 2020 — the ubiquitous and ambiguous phrase ‘digital transformation’ gave way suddenly to new concerns for ‘business continuity’.
Source: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=digital%20transformation,business%20continuity
In the realm of the latter phrase, companies are recognizing a need to digitally transform in the following key areas ASAP:
- Remote work enablement
- Operational stability / mitigating downtime (ensuring uptime)
- Security compliance and governance
- Automation
- Cost-cutting & ROI
- Disaster recovery
- Testing backup and recovery plans
Guiding the above concerns, the following are at the forefront of current business requirements:
- Cost-cutting
- Operational transparency
- New and practical solutions for current needs
In short, the terms ‘digital transformation’ and ‘business continuity’ are starting to be understood as synonymous. Companies that had already made significant gains in digital transformation were far more prepared for what hit us in Q1 2020.
What leading business analysts recommend
Despite all the jokes about lawyers, consultants, and analysts, we do have a tendency to turn to these specialists when we need them. And, like good parents or grandparents or teachers or doctors, they never seem to hold a grudge against us for coming to them late, though I suspect that they too have comedic remedies for the daily pain of dealing with their ‘children’.
Analyst firms such as Gartner, IDC, and Forrester tend to see companies turning to them with greater frequency and intensity when those companies have ambitious plans or need more guidance during uncertain times.
Here is a sample of the types of analysis or guidance that have caught my attention recently from Gartner, IDC, Forrester, UptimeInstitute, and TechTarget (just a few of the many different firms sharing guidance to help us through whatever now ails us):
Gartner
A Gartner article from April 2020 details five phases for CIOs to focus on in order to develop the most resilient business model:
- Phase 1: Define the current business model
- Phase 2: Identify uncertainties
- Phase 3: Assess the impact
- Phase 4: Design changes
- Phase 5: Execute changes
The first three phases are simple enough for most organizations, but the fourth and fifth phases are where things get tricky. Companies are often using too many tools, which in effect leads away from operational transparency and efficiency, and as well opens bigger doors to potential security issues.
Additionally, a large tool collection can be expensive at a time when nearly all organizations are looking to cut costs. Companies need comprehensive solutions that can replace some of that tool collection and associated costs.
IDC
One IDC analyst stated to me that what’s happening now is similar to what occurred following the global financial crisis of 2008 and the European sovereign debt crisis in 2013. In such times of business uncertainty, companies need to cut costs and do not want to spend budget on hardware — here’s why:
- Hardware is not such a priority if you can extend support and maintenance contracts for another year
- It’s far more prudent to invest in software that keeps productivity going via remote work, security, and process optimization
- Companies need to secure and manage what they already have in order to ensure optimal working conditions
The current approach to IT infrastructure is to ‘squeeze more from it’, maintain it, and bank on machines designed to run 24/7 being adequate for another year.
According to Mohamed Hefny, IDC Senior Program Manager, Virtualization, Systems & Infrastructure Solutions, EMEA:
“In a time of crisis, companies are often slowing on new hardware spending. They tend to renew maintenance and support contracts, then redirect investment to software solutions and services — in security, virtualization, and cloud services — to optimize the benefits from their existing infrastructure and from flexibility like remote management, communication, and mobility.”
Forrester
In March 2020, Forrester provided a webinar on response planning for the COVID-19 pandemic. Here are some highlights that I found most insightful, and I suspect that companies have already done much of this in recent months:
- Define your response team, designate a backup person for every critical role, and communicate this to the organization.
- Make a Business Impact Assessment (BIA) that plans for multiple scenarios — including the possibility of supplier delays, price changes, etc.
- Build your plan, providing clear and specific action points when communicating to your organization.
- Test your plan — if there’s any system not already active (via “trial by fire”), then load/stress test it NOW.
This reinforces Gartner’s message that new plans not only need to be established, but also executed at the very least via testing.
UptimeInstitute
UptimeInstitute’s “Pandemic planning and response: A guide for critical infrastructure” from May 2020 stresses that companies should review and revise backup/disaster recovery plans, as the remote-work shift results in “increased stress on bandwidth, the power grid, networking, etc.”
Further potential disruptions include capacity-extension projects, supply chains, and issues with staffing. UptimeInstitute recommends remote monitoring/management automation software where possible (for critical alerts, etc.).
TechTarget
In a study of UK & Ireland 2020 IT Priorities released by TechTarget in early May, Cyber Security & Risk Management ranked first for top spending areas for this year, followed by Cloud Migration/Deployment and Mobility & End-User Computing.
Almost a third of companies in the UK and Ireland plan to increase budgets for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and a quarter of companies there intend to increase their investment in on-premises infrastructure.
Machine learning, AI, and remote monitoring/management automation software?
Companies that are running VMware and AWS environments and looking for a 2020 ‘digital transformation’ solution for ‘business continuity’ in the current landscape of ‘uncertainty’ need look no further than Runecast Analyzer. As we’ve read above, before buying a new server and deploying more virtual machines (VMs), companies need to secure and manage the ones that they already have and ensure optimum working conditions to squeeze the most from their investments.
Runecast’s secure on-premises predictive analytics for vSphere, vSAN, NSX, Horizon, and AWS environments provides the level of stability and compliance that companies need to ensure uptime and be ‘audit-ready’ in the post-COVID-19 world and beyond.
Automation
Automated insights for issue prevention and security compliance do what is not humanly possible, thus enabling IT teams to focus on resolving known issues in a proactive manner. Runecast Analyzer automates the work via its newly patented Runecast A.I. Knowledge Automation (RAIKA) engine — by aggregating knowledge, analyzing it, and providing insights directly to IT administrators — proactively, in real-time.
This enables VMware & AWS admins to clearly ‘see the future’ in terms of potential issues and be able to proactively remediate them, which leads to greater efficiency and reliability and a savings of man-hours previously spent on reactive troubleshooting — in effect, freeing resources to work on projects related to business growth opportunities.
Cost-cutting & ROI
Runecast customer case studies explain how Runecast Analyzer has in many cases provided an immediate ROI from the very first scan. It does this foremost exposing previously unknown issues in mission-critical environments, which helps to reduce critical situations and ensure data center uptime. All of this in turn reduces what far too many (unfortunately) organizations consider to be ‘standard’ data center costs.
According to customers, Runecast Analyzer not only pays for itself right away but as well frees budget to further business growth in other areas.
Operational stability / mitigating downtime (ensuring uptime)
Arguably the most important factor of achieving and maintaining operational stability is having full transparency. Runecast Analyzer’s real-time dashboards show the status of configuration issues and security compliance, to provide better visibility of critical IT infrastructure — with proactive and actionable insights for IT teams.
Security compliance and governance
Runecast Analyzer operates securely on-premises, with no data shared outside the user environment. In addition to automated checks to align infrastructure with best practices for VMware, AWS, and SAP HANA, as well as security hardening for VMware and AWS, Runecast also provides automated compliance checks for standards such as CIS, NIST, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, DISA STIG, and BSI IT-Grundschutz, with more standards added regularly to the analyzer’s capabilities.
Remote work enablement
Part of Runecast’s COVID-19 response (which also includes free licenses for hospitals and universities) has been to help enable IT System Admins with greater visibility into VMware Horizon environments for remote-office stability. After the initial 14-day trial of Runecast Analyzer, full (unlimited) visibility of all VMware Horizon issues is enabled for everyone. Runecast Analyzer’s Horizon insights include automated Best Practices analysis and reporting, as well as correlation of Horizon and vSphere objects for proactive configuration issue analysis.
Overall business outcome for Runecast Analyzer users
Optimization (repurposing) of labor, reduction of costs
IT teams can manage increasingly more infrastructure on a per-person basis, reducing what many (unfortunately) consider to be ‘standard’ data center costs — to free up budget for growth.
Operational transparency
IT teams can expose previously unknown issues in mission-critical environments — and provide compliance and risk management reporting that goes back a whole year for auditing purposes.
Reduction of risk
Virtualized data centers stay up and running, efficiently, via a proactive, automated approach to mitigating critical issues — which helps to ensure uptime and business continuity.
Happy customers
Some organizations already benefiting from Runecast Analyzer to mitigate service risks and ensure maximum efficiency and performance within their data centers include: Chevron, Erste Bank, Raiffeisen Bank, de Volksbank, Fujisoft, Scania, Avast Software, the NHS, and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Larger enterprises now benefit from the addition of an Enterprise Console, for a single-dashboard view of larger environments.
If your organization is looking for secure on-premises, predictive, real-time issues analysis and security compliance checks for VMware and AWS environments, try Runecast for free today.
