For most enterprises today, a flexible unified infrastructure—where servers, storage and networks can be quickly configured and provisioned to meet changing business requirements—is a utopian dream. However, if enterprise vendors deliver on the unified infrastructure vision, a world of adaptable hardware is on the anvil.

HP has jumped on to the unified infrastructure bandwagon with its vision of ‘Converged Infrastructure.’ The company is a key player in this new ecosystem along with Cisco.

In conversation with Srikanth RP, Jim Wagstaff, VP & GM, StorageWorks Division, Enterprise Storage, Servers and Networking, HP Enterprise Business, shares his perspective on why unified architecture is the need of the hour.

There is a sudden buzz in the industry about unified architecture. How do you think vendor initiatives in this space will change the way enterprises buy computing infrastructure?

To keep pace with rapid growth, the IT function has been adding servers, storage and networking at a frantic pace. In this conventional approach, there is no sharing of resources, and IT resources get locked up and get dedicated to particular departments or applications.

While virtualization has been predominant in the server space, it has not reached a stage where the entire IT infrastructure of an organization can be virtualized.

To be truly adaptable, storage and networking resources too must become fully virtualized to match the dynamic requirements of virtual servers. The solution lies in the convergence of storage, networking and servers, and managing it via single centralized console. This converged infrastructure ensures that multiple applications can draw resources from a central pool of IT resources, and supply can be dynamically matched with changes in demand.

IT resources can also be repurposed for other applications. This means that enterprises can incrementally buy IT infrastructure as they grow. This is in contrast to the traditional approach where enterprises either stock up too much capacity (keeping in mind peak overloads) or do not have enough capacity whenever the load on the infrastructure goes beyond historically observed limits.