Executive Summary What Are The Challenges Driving Enterprises To Infrastructure Convergence?... 3

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2 Executive Summary... 2 What Are The Challenges Driving Enterprises To Infrastructure Convergence?... 3 I&O Perception Of Converged Infrastructure Maps Well To Vendor Offerings... 5 Benefits Of Converged Infrastructures... 6 Actual Plans For CI Implementation Are Robust... 8 Perceived Barriers Versus Actual Experience With Converged Infrastructure Key Conclusions Key Recommendations Appendix A: Methodology Appendix B: Respondent Demographics , Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester, Technographics, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. For additional information, go to [1-IVP5TP] Page 1

3 To understand infrastructure and operations (I&O) perceptions of converged infrastructure (CI), HP and Intel commisioned Forrester Consulting to survey 200 I&O decision-makers from six different countries (see Appendix B for further demographic information). These decision-makers, from organizations with more than 1,000 employees, were asked about their expectations of benefits and barriers to implementation of CI. Additionally, for the portion of the respondents who had actually implemented CI, Forrester gathered information on their actual experiences. Forrester defines CI as a pooled and virtualized combination of servers, edge networking, and storage, with built-in virtualization abstractions for the physical layer of infrastructure (not to be confused with hypervisortype virtual machines) and integrated management. CI implies the ability to pool resources, streamline management, and in the end, the ability to more rapidly and flexibly provision infrastructure and services. While there is considerable variation in the actual vendor implementations of CI, all products embody some or all of the above definition. CI has proven to offer significant advantages in manageability, energy efficiency, and density, all of which contribute to opex savings improvements over conventional infrastructure, and Forrester believes that CI should be considered for any major infrastructure refresh or net new investment. From a vendor perspective, while CI solutions are still a minority of shipments, they represent the fastestgrowing segment of enterprise infrastructure, and Forrester expects this trend to continue. Forrester s study yielded the following key findings: Pressures on I&O remain constant. The background pressures on I&O have remained constant and intense, with no perceived change in demands on IT from earlier studies. Both budget pressures (55%) and difficulty of provisioning infrastructure as well as applications and services (51%) were cited by more than half of the respondents. I&O practitioners definitions of CI are in line with Forrester definitions. Potential consumers of CI define the expected functions of CI in essentially the same fashion as Forrester and most vendors, leading us to believe that the benefits are understood and communicated correctly by the wider vendor community. Of particular significance was the strong perception (85%) that CI involved virtualized and pooled server, network, and storage resources. Desired benefits cluster around cost and immediate business benefits. I&O executives are focused on hard benefits such as cost reduction (89%) and business responsiveness. Soft benefits such as green IT are lower in priority (40%). Simplification, standards, and ease of integration trump cost and best-of-breed. Respondents weigh overall functionality (62%), ease of integration, and standardization ahead of lowest cost and best-of-breed components (27%). Page 2

4 Concerns center on complexity and vendor over commitment. Respondents are concerned about the complexity of integration and the potential for vendor overstatement of benefits. Purchasing authority is concentrated at the CIO level. While recommenders are distributed throughout the organization, purchasing authority is highly concentrated (70%) at the CIO level. As a check on the general outlook of the respondents, Forrester requested that they identify the pressures and challenges they saw impacting their organizations. Note that the pressures are dominated by very pragmatic concerns about revenue, growth, and competitive positioning (see Figure 1). This pragmatic theme is reflected throughout the survey, with respondents continually in favor of hard business benefits instead of softer and more indirect benefits from proposed technology investments. These pressures also track well against other Forrester survey data, which consistently shows that IT organizations are challenged by budgetary pressures and the escalating complexity of their operations, driven by increased business demand for new systems and continued escalation of transaction volumes. What IT challenges are driving your organization to consider or invest in a converged infrastructure? Budget constraints/cuts 55% Provisioning of infrastructure and applications takes too long 51% IT sprawl 46% Can t keep up with the business and all the IT requests 4 Lack of agility 40% Need to free up budget for innovation 29% Other (please specify) Page 3

5 Despite recovering from the lows of the 2007 to 2009 recession, IT organizations are still under immense budgetary pressures. Combined with the continued dominance of maintenance and capacity expansion at the expense of investment in new initiatives, as shown in Figure 2, IT organizations are primed for any solutions that can lower their opex and allow them to divert resources to new initiatives that add business value. Our survey respondents identified the difficulty of provisioning new capacity as the second most mentioned challenge, mapping perfectly to the responses in Figure 2, indicating that capacity expansion is the second largest resource sink for their organizations. By simplifying provisioning, CI offers relief from this pressure. The sheer complexity ( sprawl ) of the IT environments in most companies is a significant challenge, and through its integration of normally disparate elements of network, server, and storage management, CI offers potential for some degree of simplification of the environment. In 2011, approximately what percentage of your organization s combined IT operating and capital budget will go to: 4 33% Mean 23% 2011 new IT initiatives and projects 2011 ongoing operations and maintenance 2011 expansion of capacity to support business growth (e.g., new PCs for added employees, added storage capacity to handle increased data to be stored) Page 4

6 In general, perceptions of CI map well to existing technology offerings from vendors, leading us to believe that the potential users have an appropriate set of expectations and that vendor offerings are well positioned. Which of the following elements do you feel are required for a converged infrastructure? Virtualization and pooled management of server, storage, and network resources 85% Integrated management console, i.e., integrated server, storage, networking, and management systems 76% A shared services environment across technologies, management, processes, and people 67% Standards-based, modular components that can act as building blocks to convergence 66% Automated provisioning of infrastructure 56% A shared services catalog 46% Prepackaged and integrated hypervisor and hypervisor management 38% Prepackaged and integrated applications and solutions 36% There are, however, some complexities in interpreting these responses. Note specifically that while there is general agreement that CI consists of pools of virtualized infrastructure, substantial minorities of respondents place differing values on automation, service catalogs, and the requirements for integrated applications as part of the CI stack. These last three functions are likely to represent very significant differences in requirements for CI solutions and will likely also represent significant departures among vendors as they address various mixes of user requirements in their products. The implications for both potential consumers and vendors are clear: Consumers of solutions must understand their requirements clearly, as vendor offerings will continue to offer different combinations of these desired functions. Page 5

7 Vendors must place their bets on the desired mix of functions and clearly communicate capabilities and differences. For reference, Forrester defines CI as a pooled and virtualized stack of server, network, and storage integrated with common management that allows operations on these elements to be conducted without impinging on the external data center environment. Additional elements of automation and service/application integration may also be present. Reduced to its essentials, the benefits that users expect from a CI answer the ongoing reality of contemporary IT as shown in Figure 5 that most of the budget still goes toward keeping the lights on as opposed to new business initiatives. In our sample, approximately 70% of the IT money goes to other than new business innovation. From interviews with companies that have implemented CI solutions, Forrester believes that CI delivers benefits that address these pressures, among them: Simplified provisioning. By virtualizing these user IDs (UIDs) so they are isolated from the external network environment, and by integrating the provisioning of network definitions, storage mapping and Page 6

8 other server administrative tasks into a single console, CI solutions allow a single point of provisioning without the necessity of multiple interactions among server, network, and storage groups. The ability to predefine pools of these IDs further streamlines operations. Simplified management. By centralizing management of servers, storage, and networking, these solutions streamline the day-to-day management of the infrastructure. Reducing physical complexity. CI solutions are almost universally implemented upon a physical foundation of blade servers, which provide significant simplification of the physical infrastructure, reducing cable connections to the enterprise environment by up to 90% and simplifying management of the physical servers. Accelerating IT. In addition to reducing costs, CI solutions allow faster response to business requests and also form the foundation technology upon which enterprises can build cloud-like environments. In short, respondents clearly perceived CI as a solution that can deliver incremental improvements to their current situation. Which benefits have you realized (or do you expect to realize) through investment in your converged infrastructure? Create a more efficient, shared IT infrastructure Centralization of IT resources Improved IT infrastructure manageability Improved flexibility and IT responsiveness to business requirements 69% 69% 6 62% Improved disaster recovery and business continuity 56% Cloud-ready infrastructure Increased automation Improved time to provision systems Lower total cost of infrastructure ownership Improved power and cooling efficiency Improved labor costs Compliance, legal, and regulatory 50% 47% 46% 41% 40% 40% 37% Page 7

9 Server virtualization, the necessary precursor to CI, is ubiquitous across most of the industry, with the overwhelming majority of enterprises indicating that they are in some phase of implementing and/or expanding a virtualization program and users are beginning to take advantage of storage and network virtualization capabilities as well. Against this background, the survey respondents show a very healthy set of responses to questions about the state of their implementations and plans. Other Forrester research confirms this trend toward implementation. It also highlights additional organization considerations, most notably, that successful organizations are ones that are willing to change some of their internal processes to get maximum benefits from their CI investments. The groups that are most affected by the implementation of CI are the server, storage, and networking administration groups, which must now redefine their relationships and responsibilities to allow a single set of administrators to assign MAC addresses, WWN mappings, etc., to servers. The major change in process is often the joint specification of pooled ranges of UIDs and then the delegation of the actual assignment responsibility in concept, a reasonable accommodation, but one that in some cases was accompanied by significant organizational friction. Another affected role is first-line support, which now has to understand the relationship between the centralized management capabilities and the specialized domain expertise of the server, storage, and network groups, and may need additional training in the CI solution. Security groups are often involved in the CI selection process and will want to weigh in on any changes to security policies. What are your firm s plans to implement a converged infrastructure? Interested in CI but no plans 1 Not interested in CI 3% CI implemented, not expanding 8% Expanding/ upgrading CI implementation 19% Planning to implement CI in a year or more 28% Planning to implement CI in the next 12 months 28% Page 8

10 Currently, actual CI implementation is happening in more than a quarter of the organizations surveyed (27%) as shown in Figure 6, and more than 50% of the remaining respondents are planning on implementation, with more than half of this group planning on implementing within the next 12 months. Only a tiny percentage of the respondents indicate that they are not interested in CI. Overall, this pattern adds up to a strong endorsement of the CI concept and is positive for the overall health of this segment. Forrester believes that CI capabilities will become increasingly important for many enterprises and that failure to adopt them can impede competitiveness. Having established that CI momentum is strong, the next major question is buying criteria who is buying these CI solutions, and what are the criteria? On the subject of who makes the purchasing decision, the answer is very strongly weighted toward the CIO, with strong participation by multiple influencers. Which group is or will be the primary decision-maker in selecting a converged infrastructure? (Select one) What groups are involved in influencing that decision? (Select all that apply) CIO Corporate IT, primarily within enterprise architecture Corporate IT, primarily within server architecture Corporate IT, primarily within storage architecture Corporate IT, primarily within networking 16% 28% 70% 72% 73% 66% 6 Corporate IT, other (please specify) Business unit (including technical staff within the business unit) Equally shared between corporate IT and the business unit Other (please specify) Don't know 13% 1% 2% 7% 1% 25% 3 Influencers Decision-maker In regard to selection of solutions, the weighting of criteria by survey participants shows an interesting streak of pragmatism, along with the sensitivity to economics that seems to permeate other areas of the survey. Page 9

11 How important is each of the following criteria to your organization when selecting/assessing a converged infrastructure solution? Overall functionality 62% 31% 6% 1% Overall system cost (including software licenses, hardware costs, and implementation costs) 53% 37% 7% 3% Ability to integrate with your firm's other systems 62% 26% 9% 2% 1% Integrated management of overall system 51% 37% 11% 1% Availability of service and support 48% 38% 10% 2% Technology vendor/manufacturer brand/reputation 30% 41% 22% 6% 1% Speed of implementation 33% 36% 23% 6% 2% Best-of-breed components 27% 40% 23% 8% Software usage/consumption model (pay per use) 26% 37% 23% 7% References in my industry 25% 36% 30% 7% 1% Very important: Not important at all: 1 Respondents gave high weights to integration, manageability, and cost, with surprisingly low weights to best-ofbreed components and industry peer references. We hypothesize that the latter reflects the sophistication of the survey respondents and their realization that CI represents a horizontal capability, and that peer industry references are not as critical as they would be if it was a line-of-business solution such as a financial application. While the data indicates a very strong demand for CI and strong intentions to purchase, barriers remain for vendors to bring solutions to market and successfully market them to I&O groups. Some of these barriers are real, and others are perception issues, but suppliers must take these latter concerns seriously, as they represent significant barriers to adoption. Page 10

12 Why isn t your organization considering a converged infrastructure? High cost of implementation 56% Not convinced of the benefits 41% Immaturity 31% Moving directly to cloud computing Vendor lock-in Don't believe the benefits will be delivered Perceived risk 25% 22% 19% 16% Other (please specify) 9% The experience of those who have actually implemented CI solutions tracks well with the concerns of those who have not, with complex integration being, in Forrester s opinion, a good proxy for the a priori concerns about the complexity of integration. On the plus side of the ledger, failure to deliver anticipated benefits was a low-order outcome in actual implementations. The large delta between perception and reality leads us to believe that familiarity will reduce the perception of risk as CI solutions become increasingly mainstream. What have been some of the challenges realized in the rollout of your converged infrastructure? Complex integration with existing infrastructure Time and resource investment 67% 66% High cost of implementation 50% Infrastructure disruption through rollout 40% Internal resistance to change Noncompliance 31% 31% Unrealized benefits 2 Other (please specify) 3% Page 11

13 CI delivers real benefits. Responses from users who have implemented CI solutions indicate that, by and large, the promised benefits were delivered, validating the basic CI premise. The market is ready for CI. While a sufficient number of users have implemented CI projects, an even larger number have not implemented CI but plan to do so in the future. This group represents a source of potential revenue for vendors and assures I&O groups that they are not investing in a niche technology. CI will change processes. I&O groups that do not enable the new capabilities offered by making appropriate process changes run the risk of impairing the benefits of their CI solutions. CI can be used as a lever to shift budget from maintenance to innovation. With its potential to reduce operating costs and streamline internal processes, CI can be a tool to begin to shift resources toward innovation from ongoing operations and accelerate IT responsiveness to business requirements. Page 12

14 In this study, Forrester Consulting conducted an online survey of 200 organizations in the US, the UK, China, France, Germany, and Japan to evaluate current trends, practices, and future investments in converged infrastructures. Survey participants included heads of IT, direct reports to the head of IT (e.g., VP/directors), and managers of IT teams. All respondents were decision-makers or significant influencers in the purchasing of servers and IT services. Questions provided to the participants asked about the motivations for investment in converged infrastructures, current barriers to investment, implementation challenges, and the benefits realized from investment. The study began in and was completed in October In which country is your organization headquartered? China 1 United States 42% France 10% Germany 1 United Kingdom 1 Japan 6% Page 13

15 Using your best estimate, how many employees work for your firm/organization worldwide? 1,000 to 4,999 employees 41% 5,000 to 14,999 employees 27% 15,000 to 24,999 employees 12% 25,000 to 34,999 employees 8% 35,000 or more employees 12% Which of the following best describes the industry to which your company belongs? Manufacturing and materials Banking and financial services Government Hardware/software products and services Business or consumer services Healthcare Transportation and logistics Telecommunications services Technology (not listed above) Retail Insurance Education Construction Energy, utilities, and waste management Travel and hospitality Life sciences Electronics Consumer product manufacturing Chemicals and metals Other (please specify) 7% 6% 6% 5% 3% 2% 2% 2% 2% 2% 2% 12% 19% Page 14

16 In general, how involved are you in the following stages of technology purchasing (e.g., IT hardware, software, services)? (Select all that apply) Choosing/recommending IT vendors 70% 30% Defining IT requirements 70% 30% Authorizing IT purchases 68% 32% Setting IT priorities 6 36% Setting or managing IT budgets 59% 41% Managing RFPs 57% 43% I am often the final decision-maker I provide significant input to the final decision-maker Page 15