| | November 20169CIORevieworganizations. The real benefit of HCI is to consolidate not just infrastructure, but the management of infrastructure. CIOs looking for breakout solutions to tough digital transformation challenges are finding that integrated infrastructure facilitates integrated problem solving.A classic business school case study is to show that teams working together are more creative problem solvers than individuals working alone. The same dynamic applies to IT where teams working together on networking, compute, and storage issues are more likely to solve problems in innovative ways. Technology decision makers, who once were let down by their infrastructure inefficiency, are now making maximum value out of their HCI investments. But the consolidation value of HCI is also its biggest roadblock. For every CIO that wants more control and every CFO that wants more financial leverage, there are legacy IT teams that worry about their domain expertise and power base. The political challenge of HCI is that it pushes teams to expand their charter from optimizing a single IT resource to optimizing IT as a whole. To get started with HCI, you may need to find the Chuck Yeagers in your organization who will take on established norms and act as the test pilots of the software-defined data center era. There are low-risk ways to get started such as test/dev, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) ordisaster recovery (DR) systems. These markets allow IT organizations to experience the management and cost benefits of HCI with limited risk.But others may want to move more quickly to realize the benefits of HCI in regaining competitive advantage at a time of great change and digital transformation. The attraction of HCI for mainstream customers explains why HCI is the fastest growing market in storage today and why IDC forecasts the market will grow to $4.8 billion by 2019.Fortunately, it's possible to start small with HCI and then scale out. Because the architecture is built on standard servers, initial investments are minimal relative to legacy systems and resources can be dynamically added to a running system. HCI systems can be grown incrementally over time to eliminate the forklift upgrades that stress budgets and limit flexibility. And like the first supersonic planes, HCI leverages proven technology. Virtualization administrators can "fly" HCI because the new design extends the power of virtualization from compute to include shared management of storage and networking resources.There has never been as competitive of an environment for business. HCI is that new aeronautic design that can help IT break economic and management barriers and deliver IT as a long-term competitive asset for businesses of any size. My advice, find the test pilots in your company who can break through the political barriers that stand between your company and IT excellence. You may find that IT can once again work for you. Unlike hardware-defined infrastructure, HCI relies on commodity server building blocks that are unified with software and can be managed by virtualization administrators
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