How CIOs Can Achieve Their Strategic Priorities
As IT transitions from supporting the business to practically being the business across so many industries, the pressure is on CIOs to stretch their budgets and meet both the strategic and operational imperatives facing them.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced many businesses to accelerate the process of modernization by converting in-person activities to online, from employees working remotely to customer transactions and fulfillment. Investing in digital customer-facing technologies has become even more important than ever. Cloud services increasingly look like faster, less expensive options than traditional IT infrastructure for this growing list of priorities.
In this environment, established data centers can seem like more of a burden than the strategic assets we once considered them. Real estate, energy, maintenance and staffing costs weigh on a company’s balance sheet. As technologies keep advancing, recently purchased infrastructure can seem headed for premature obsolescence.
But what if those data centers actually represent a secret weapon? One that extends the useful life of infrastructure years into the future and unlocks budget dollars that can be used to more aggressively pursue modernization and new sources of digital competitive advantage? A weapon that can be deployed to more stringently protect high-value data from cyber attacks? One that frees up human talent to work on the projects that are most critical to the future of the enterprise?
Here are three ways to harness the power of the data center to meet the CIO’s strategic priorities:
Extending Life
Extend the life of existing infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of procuring new storage, servers and network equipment by using a multi-vendor service provider like CDS. As an agnostic partner, CDS can bring the data center line item in your budget down significantly through lower maintenance costs, a wide range of spare parts available globally, and high-end technical expertise. The savings can then be funneled into other IT priorities, like new apps or services or other modernization initiatives.
An original product’s “end of service life” does not mean the end of its useful life -- far from it. It just means that the vendor’s sales team is gearing up for a campaign to convince you to refresh your data center with its newest and most advanced products. With a multi-vendor services partner like CDS, you can gain new ways to align your hardware costs with your business goals, empowering you to replace your infrastructure when it’s right for your business plans.
Minding the (Skills) Gap
The IT skills gap worries 78 percent of managers worldwide. While many blame the rapidly changing technology landscape, making better use of manpower could help address this issue as well. By outsourcing maintenance and support to a trusted partner, you in essence expand your current IT team by freeing up your in-house talent to grow their skills and focus on initiatives that align more closely with business goals.
Protecting the Core
As the edge gains more traction in the market, so do data centers. According to Gartner, CIOs and other IT leaders are looking to workload placement based on business outcomes as a key success factor. With the edge expected to account for 75 percent of all enterprise-generated data by 2025, the physical management of data centers will evolve to more colocation, hosting and cloud providers. Traditional IT and facilities teams will need to be trained up for their new roles to drive business forward while ensuring their core data assets are well maintained and operationally efficient.
Because CDS had made the investments in engineering talent and technologies to support a wide range of infrastructure products, from storage to servers to network equipment, the company has become a reliable global partner to the major OEMs as they work to add value to their customers' data centers and realize digital transformation potential in front of them.
When it comes to innovation, older data centers may seem like the last place to look. But with the right partners, the transformative potential of your existing infrastructure can become a surprisingly powerful secret weapon in a CIO’s business arsenal.
