For the past few years, the IT industry as a whole has been under significant strain to become faster and more agile due to a rapidly growing data problem involving growth, capacity, and efficiency. It has been quite a whirlwind, to say the least. In the past, organizations only needed about 36GB of drive capacity in a data center. Today, drives are equipped with more than 6TB of capacity to support apps that are growing 5x faster than IT can deliver, and organizations are collecting more data than they ever did in the past.. In fact, IDC predicted that amount of available data will increase from 4.4 zettabytes (ZB) to 44 zettabytes by 2020 (1 ZB is a quadrillion GB!) This growth requires IT teams to spend about 80% of their time and budgets on managing the traditional solutions. Why? Performance becomes bottlenecked by limited capacity. Think of it this way – on a typical day, your normal sized cup of coffee will do the trick. But on the days when you need an extra boost, and you switch to an extra-large cup (or better yet a barrel), you can’t get that caffeine any faster using that same straw no matter how much coffee is in your cup. This limitation can get frustrating and leave you less productive. In addition to increasing drive capacity, several solutions have arisen in the last several years to solve the problem. Each new technology came with its own kinks to iron out and some were met with skepticism – as was the case with hyperconvergence. Today however, hyperconverged technology is growing rapidly in popularity and is widely accepted. Still though, some companies may have doubts, probably from not fully understanding all that hyperconverged offers. To quell those doubts, here are the three things you should know, but maybe don’t, about hyperconverged infrastructure: 1. The network is not a weak link for every vendor This is a typical criticism of hyperconverged technology. In a previous InfoWorld article, I explain how hyperconvergence can help with slow network performance and provide factors to help differentiate the vendors. How a vendor stores, moves, and backs up the data in their multi-site environment has a huge impact on the data problem. Only a few solutions today understand the importance of data locality and moving that data between where it is stored and the end user (as it should be). In short, don’t overlook hyperconverged solutions based on rumors or competitor FUD. Seek the facts. 2. Importance of on-prem With compliant strains like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) weighing heavily on our minds, there are new concerns surrounding new technology solutions and compliance. For instance, there is concern about putting all of your data in the public cloud. Without considering the importance of the cloud’s data protection, sovereignty, and legal issues that come with compliance, you could face some big headaches. A primarily on-prem solution, like hyperconverged infrastructure, could relieve that strain. This doesn’t mean you should forget the cloud – for a preferred Hybrid IT model, chances are you’ll need the cloud. Each business needs to determine which workloads should be in the public cloud and which ones should not. Due to new technologies, such as hyperconverged platforms and composable infrastructure, keeping your most valuable data on-premises is now easier, faster and more cost-effective than ever before. 3. Transition is important A common fear I hear about hyperconverged solutions is that you will have to not only learn new management tools, but also toss out all of your old infrastructure that you’ve invested tons of money in. On top of that, some companies are concerned about the overall strategy of a startup compared to their tested and proven enterprise-grade vendor. At first, most hyperconverged vendors were generated by startups, but now nearly all enterprise infrastructure companies have developed a hyperconverged solution or integrated it in the overall strategy. Because of this, the existing infrastructure isn’t trashed and instead can be leveraged in the existing strategy, allowing it to grow rather than be replaced. Even vendors that made it their passion to disrupt the market and try to prove themselves for enterprise deployment have begun to see the light behind being compatible with other infrastructures and tools. HPE hyperconverged infrastructure solutions are positioned to resolve the data problem with a simple, efficient, agile, software-defined platform. These solutions are designed for the enterprise with on-premises capabilities that integrate with existing server or cloud infrastructure. For more reasons to consider hyperconverged to solve your data problem, download the free e-book: Hyperconverged Infrastructure For Dummies. Technology Industry