Data Center and Virtualization

SCENARIO

Whether it is the development of an agile IT-as-a-Service environment, the availability of an effective basis for Big Data analytics, or the move to a cloud-ready platform – many companies are increasingly looking at the Data Center as a vital asset to gain a competitive advantage.

In today market scenario, ICT efficiency and flexibility have become absolutely essential to shorten the time-to-market: ICT functions need to align quickly with business needs, driving the change from static to agile service models, thus implementing what Gartner defines as “bimodal IT”. Risk reduction can be as well achieved by converting CapEx to OpEx. Innovative Service Providers are matching these needs by providing Cloud Services to their Business customers; catching this paradigm shift is a great opportunity to create new revenue streams, thus avoiding being flattened on pure connectivity.

Both for Enterprises and for Service Providers, a fundamental prerogative for a successful agile ICT Services delivery is the implementation of Next Generation Data Centers, capable to guarantee high levels of performance and flexibility, coupled with an efficient underlying IP infrastructure that must be tightly integrated, since most of the traffic is not directed to the service consumers, but enclosed within the Data Center itself.

Virtualization is the cornerstones of the Next Generation Data Center, along with an appropriate orchestration of all involved resources, processes and functions. The newest software-defined infrastructures may provide the highest levels of flexibility and performances.

BENEFITS

Next Generation Data Centers allow both Enterprises and Service Providers to deliver new and more efficient ICT services, thus fuelling competitiveness, and providing savings at all cost items.

Leveraging an optimized, robust and flexible Data Center infrastructure, Enterprises can take advantage of an agile, distributed, access to corporate ICT services, enabling as well the fast deployment of new applications. A Next Generation Data Center can be the foundation for any vertical ICT solution or for strategic deployments of Hybrid Cloud models with a pool of common resources to be elastically exploited and a “pay-per-use” model facilitating cost reporting and planning.

When professionally designed and deployed, a Next Generation Data Center guarantees the required performance, security, scalability, manageability, and environmental sustainability (enabling a reduction of the CO2 footprint). Optimized architectures enable a CapEx reduction. Energy efficiency and simplified management –allowing power savings, easy maintenance and provisioning operations– minimize OpEx.

For a Service Provider that wishes to enrich its offer portfolio with Cloud services, a Next Generation Data Center guarantees several benefits, strictly related to the nature of architecture itself. Resources can scale rapidly, along with customers’ requirements in terms of applications and capacity. Service Providers that offer also network connectivity can have a competitive advantage against since they can guarantee service quality by keeping the control of the whole end-to-end infrastructure.

TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION

The foundation of a Next Generation Data Center consists of a combination of computing, storage and network infrastructure, with Virtualization at all levels and a holistic Management solution that facilitates the overall resource provisioning and orchestration. According to Customer needs, a customized design –providing higher flexibility– or pre-integrated architecture –suitable for fast deployments– can be delivered.

The path to fully take advantage of a Data Center encompasses multiple aspects and competencies, ranging from business process optimization, to wide-range consultancy and design of the proper infrastructure, to supporting migration of existing applications and data.

Italtel is in a privileged position to drive Enterprises and Service Providers along this path, leveraging partnerships and relationships with the major players in the business area – such us Cisco, Citrix, EMC, F5, Microsoft, Netapp, VMware – and the proven experience, confirmed by significant successful projects and the achieved certifications, such as Cisco Master Cloud Builder Specialization.

Italtel can provide high quality professional services in each of the technical areas involved in a Data Center project: network enhancement (assessment, migration, transition to 40/100G), server and storage virtualization and consolidation (infrastructure definition and design, energy efficiency), Data Center resiliency (Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Data Center interconnection), Software-Defined Data Center (with reference to Cisco ACI, Programmable Fabric), infrastructure deployment (OSS Integration, Security and Facility creation).

Data Center and Virtualization

SCENARIO

BENEFITS

TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION

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