forrester ci thought leadership paper

7/31/2019 Forrester CI Thought Leadership Paper

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Executive Summary ...................................... ........................................ ........................................ ........................................ ...................................... . 2What 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 .............................................................................................................................................................. 6Actual Plans For CI Implementation Are Robust ......................................................................................................................................... 8 Perceived Barriers Versus Actual Experience With Converged Infrastructure ........................................................................ 10Key Conclusions ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 12Key Recommendations ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 12Appendix A: Methodology ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 13Appendix B: Respondent Demographics ....................................................................................................................................................... 13

2011, 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 www.forrester.com. [1-IVP5TP]
http://www.forrester.com/consulting


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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 hypervisor-

type 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 Forresterbelieves 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 fastest-

growing segment of enterprise infrastructure, and Forrester expects this trend to continue.

Forresters study yielded the following key findings:

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.

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.

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%).

Respondents weigh overall

functionality (62%), ease of integration, and standardization ahead of lowest cost and best-of-breed

components (27%).


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Respondents are concerned about the

complexity of integration and the potential for vendor overstatement of benefits.

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?

4%

29%

40%

44%

46%

51%

55%

Other (please specify)

Need to free up budget for innovation

Lack of agility

Cant keep up with the business and allthe IT requests

IT sprawl

Provisioning of infrastructure andapplications takes too long

Budget constraints/cuts


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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 offerspotential for some degree of simplification of the environment.

In 2011, approximately what percentage of your organizations combined IT operating and capitalbudget will go to:

33%

44%

23%

2011 new IT initiativesand projects

2011 ongoing operationsand maintenance

2011 expansion of capacity to supportbusiness growth (e.g., new PCs for added

employees, added storage capacity to

handle increased data to be stored)

Mean


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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.

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.

Which of the following elements do you feel are required for a converged infrastructure?

36%

38%

46%

56%

66%

67%

76%

85%

Prepackaged and integrated applications andsolutions

Prepackaged and integrated hypervisor andhypervisor management

A shared services catalog

Automated provisioning of infrastructure

Standards-based, modular components that can actas building blocks to convergence

A shared services environment across

technologies, management, processes, and people

Integrated management console, i .e., integratedserver, storage, networking, and management

systems

Virtualization and pooled management ofserver, storage, and network resources


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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:

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


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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.

By centralizing management of servers, storage, and networking, these solutions

streamline the day-to-day management of the infrastructure.

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.

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?

37%

40%

40%

41%

46%

47%

50%

56%

62%

64%

69%

69%

Compliance, legal, and regulatory

Improved labor costs

Improved power and cooling efficiency

Lower total cost of infrastructure ownership

Improved time to provision systems

Increased automation

Cloud-ready infrastructure

Improved disaster recovery and business continuity

Improved flexibility and IT responsiveness to businessrequirements

Improved IT infrastructure manageability

Centralization of IT resources

Create a more efficient, shared IT infrastructure


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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 firms plans to implement a converged infrastructure?

CI implemented,not expanding

8%

Expanding/upgrading CI

implementation

19%

Planning toimplement CI in

the next 12

months28%

Planning toimplement CI ina year or more

28%

Interested in CIbut no plans

14%

Not interested inCI3%


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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.

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.

7%

2%

1%

4%

16%

70%

1%

4%

25%

34%

13%

64%

66%

73%

72%

28%

Don't know


Equally shared between corporate IT and thebusiness unit

Business unit (including technical staff within thebusiness unit)

Corporate IT, other (please specify)

Corporate IT, primarily within networking

Corporate IT, primarily within storage architecture

Corporate IT, primarily within server architecture

Corporate IT, primarily within enterprise architecture

CIO

Influencers Decision-maker

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)


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Respondents gave high weights to integration, manageability, and cost, with surprisingly low weights to best-of-

breed 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.

How important is each of the following criteria to your organization when selecting/assessing a converged

infrastructure solution?

25%

26%

27%

33%

30%

48%

51%

62%

53%

62%

36%

37%

40%

36%

41%

38%

37%

26%

37%

31%

30%

23%

23%

23%

22%

10%

11%

9%

7%

6%

7%

7%

8%

6%

6%

2%

1%

2%

3%

1%

References in my industry

Software usage/consumption model (pay per use)

Best-of-breed components

Speed of implementation

Technology vendor/manufacturer brand/reputation

Availability of service and support

Integrated management of overall system

Ability to integrate with your firm's other systems

Overall system cost (including software l icenses, hardwarecosts, and implementation costs)

Overall functionality

Very important: 5 4 3 2 Not important at al l: 1

1%

1%

2%

4%

1%


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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 Forresters 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.

Why isnt your organization considering a converged infrastructure?

9%

16%

19%

22%

25%

31%

41%

56%


Perceived risk

Don't believe the benefits wil l be delivered

Vendor lock-in

Moving directly to cloud computing

Immaturity

Not convinced of the benefits

High cost of implementation

What have been some of the challenges realized in the rollout of your converged infrastructure?

3%

24%

31%

31%

40%

50%

66%

67%


Unrealized benefits

Noncompliance

Internal resistance to change

Infrastructure disruption through rollout

High cost of implementation

Time and resource investment

Complex integration with existing infrastructure


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Responses from users who have implemented CI solutions indicate that, by and

large, the promised benefits were delivered, validating the basic CI premise.

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.

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.

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.


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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 2011.

In which country is your organization headquartered?

China14%

France10%

Germany14%

Japan6%United Kingdom

14%

United States42%


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12%

8%

12%

27%

41%

35,000 or more employees

25,000 to 34,999 employees




Using your best estimate, how many employees work for your firm/organization worldwide?

Which of the following best describes the industry to which your company belongs?

2%

2%

2%

2%

2%

2%

3%

4%

4%

4%

4%

4%

4%

4%

5%

6%

6%

7%

12%

19%


Chemicals and metals

Consumer product manufacturing

Electronics

Life sciences

Travel and hospitality

Energy, utilities, and waste management

Construction

Education

Insurance

Retail

Technology (not listed above)

Telecommunications services

Transportation and logistics

Healthcare

Business or consumer services

Hardware/software products and services

Government

Banking and financial services

Manufacturing and materials


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In general, how involved are you in the following stages of technology purchasing (e.g., IT

hardware, software, services)? (Select all that apply)

57%

59%

64%

68%

70%

70%

43%

41%

36%

32%

30%

30%

Managing RFPs

Setting or managing IT budgets

Setting IT priorities

Authorizing IT purchases

Defining IT requirements

Choosing/recommending IT vendors

I am often the final decision-maker I provide significant input to the final decision-maker

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