What will be your next car? Will it be a traditional car using fuel, or are you fully convinced it will be an electric car? Perhaps you find the leap from gas-engine to electric engine too big and you’d rather go for a hybrid car? That way you can adapt to some of the novelties that come with driving electric, but still hold on to some of the characteristics of the vehicle you have gotten used to. Well, let me tell you, many companies are hesitating just as much in switching from Platform 2 to Platform 3. And, fortunately, everyone is allowed to make that move at his own pace.
The notion of the Third Platform was first introduced by IDC a few years ago and refers to the disruptive forces that are brought on by the mega-trends of social, mobile, cloud and big data. This is not your father’s IT anymore. Through mobile devices and apps, information can be accessed from anywhere. Mobile broadband unchains employees from their desks, allowing them to be productive wherever they want to be. Cloud services are redefining IT infrastructure, storing data in private or public clouds, or combined in a hybrid system. Big Data is a trend which is not so much about the huge amounts of data captured, but all about how you sort, filter and use this data to create meaningful, real time and actionable information. Overlaying all of these trends is social networking, where technology is allowing people not only to communicate but to truly collaborate across departmental, company and even national borders. That is Platform 3, and the new situation every business leader is confronted with.
Bridging the gap
Taking the step from the client-server era to the new reality can be daunting. As we have seen over the last years, most Fortune 500 companies are renovating current infrastructure and applications, while preparing for their journey to the next level. Inside enterprises, the biggest difference between Platforms 2 and 3 lies in the applications that are used and their demands on the infrastructure. Classic enterprise workloads like Enterprise Resource Planning or “core” banking solutions are typical of the traditional setting. ERP, for instance, relies on infrastructure resilience, while new world applications like, for instance, the Uber-app, rely on app resilience and are agnostic of infrastructure. At the same time, the way IT is provisioned and managed is very different. That’s a huge gap, and it will not be bridged overnight. What we have heard in our discussions with CIOs and other business leaders is that many are trying to make savings on their platform 2 infrastructure, to invest that money in setting up a more modern structure.
To get there, some enterprises are building a hybrid model, that reconciles both platforms and helps them along this journey. It makes their IT-model a lot more flexible and cost-effective. This is very much in line with the bi-modal strategy that Gartner has been advocating for some time and that urges companies to adopt a dual speed approach where some parts of the IT infrastructure remain stable, while a second part focusses on breakthrough innovation.
At your own pace
At EMC World, we introduced VxRack, which is probably the first hybrid product that helps companies make the transition toward Platform 3. VxRack is a new hyper-converged offering that complements VCE-converged infrastructure systems like VBlock. VxRack marries the ease of use of appliances with the robustness that comes with hyper-converged systems, putting them into one and the same box. What results, is a significant boost in agility, flexibility and performance and a reduction in costs. VxRack is optimized for massive web-scale applications, and can grow from dozens of servers and scale to many thousands of servers. It helps enterprises get ready for the realm of Platform 3, while preserving many of their previous investments.
The journey will be long and windy, but it is inevitable. Tough choices will be have to be made. But it is up to every individual company to decide on the speed it adopts along the way. Some may want to use seven league boots to get there fast, others will take small steps and move along at their own pace. Just as some people switch to electric cars immediately, while others take the intermediate solution of the hybrid car. What counts is that you eventually make that switch and reach that goal.
Jacques Boschung, EMC
