CIOs need a universal storage layer to manage multicloud complexities…here’s why.

CIOs know that the right technology can unlock innovation, and continuous innovation is the pathway for organizations to become standout leaders. To keep up with evolving customer needs and the emerging technologies required to meet them, organizations must constantly adapt and innovate.

Increasingly, innovation relies on the key tenets of agility and speed. But CIOs grapple to reconcile advancing agility and speed with the complexities of managing multicloud and sprawling edge environments built on disparate standards and formats.

In most IT landscapes today, diverse storage and technology infrastructures hinder the efficient conversion and use of data and applications across varied standards and locations. As a result, islands of applications and data are formed. Data has gravity and it tends to stay where it lands. Time-consuming and expensive data migrations and application refactoring reduce the benefits of multicloud options.To put the magnitude of this challenge in perspective, recent research¹ indicates that 98% of enterprises have adopted a multicloud approach. Multicloud architectures help organizations get access to the right tools, manage their cost profiles, and quickly respond to changing needs. However siloed operations with multiple management interfaces and unique services across different clouds can drive up costs, reduce agility, and increase risk. Consequently, multicloud diversity and complexity can stifle innovation – the very thing technology is meant to enable.

A unified approach to storage everywhere

For CIOs, solving this challenge is a case of “what got you here, won’t get you there.” The answer lies in not taking the same approach and expecting a different outcome. Public cloud providers each possess their own approaches to software-defined storage infrastructure. One thing they have in common is that higher levels of performance and resilience are expensive to achieve, and they ultimately fall short of the standards set by leading enterprise storage deployed on-premises.  A universal storage layer is an architecture that brings the best of enterprise performance, resilience, and cost efficiency to all your locations – including public cloud. Software-defined storage is the key enabler to architecting a multi-location, multicloud universal storage layer, enabling a flexible infrastructure so organizations can gain agility, speed, and newfound innovations at improved cost.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is obviously all the buzz right now, but many IT leaders don’t know where to start. While AI offers enormous potential, there is also tremendous complexity as data scientists turn to multicloud to optimize application and data portability. With 82% of ITDMs preferring an on-prem or hybrid model for Generative AI, and with 75% of organizations increasing budgets to pursue AI initiatives, it’s more important than ever to have a flexible multicloud-by-design architecture that maximizes the value of your data while minimizing complexity. That is where a universal storage layer comes in.

For example, consider a remote healthcare clinic that wants to use generative AI to help monitor patients in real-time. However, the clinic does not want to implement the infrastructure needed to run the generative AI algorithms on-site. Using a common set of storage services across locations-the remote healthcare clinic can collect data, store it in a datacenter, and use an AI algorithm in the public cloud to extract some insights. 

A universal storage layer creates compatibility between storage in multiple locations. This compatibility simplifies sharing data between different locations because it eliminates the need for adapting to different storage formats in different locations. It streamlines distributed processing of that data by ensuring applications running in different locations have the same underlying storage capabilities. When the same operating environment is run across those locations applications are compatible as well as storage. This facilitates the adoption of innovative enabling technologies like AI across a distributed environment in ways that can foster breakthrough innovations. Compatibility also reduces operational complexity. Familiar interfaces and tooling reduce the need for new skills and processes, reducing operating costs.

How does a software-defined universal storage layer work?

As the healthcare example shows, a universal storage layer establishes a framework of shared storage services seamlessly connecting applications and data across the multicloud landscape. Dell’s software-defined storage built on Intel Xeon on premises can be deployed in the public cloud, private cloud, and edge locations. Deploying those common storage services everywhere enables centralized management and consistent application environments across locations to streamline operations, drive IT agility, and improve service levels. 

The same storage technology deployed across locations enables centralized visibility and management of service levels across an entire IT estate. Centralized management can orchestrate data movement among those locations as well. Integrating that storage with common cloud ecosystems – whether running in a public cloud or even deploying them on premises closes the loop with consistent application environments backed by common storage services to create true IT agility. 

What are the benefits of a universal storage layer?

A universal storage layer can simplify storage and multicloud management, reducing skills gaps and streamlining operations. Compatible environments with centralized management help CIOs orchestrate data and application movement to deliver transformational enhancements. Newfound capabilities include reduced multi-vendor complexity, improved multicloud efficiency, seamless movement of data and applications, elimination of operational silos, along with hardened security, protection, and resiliency.

In turn, the increased IT agility and speed enabled by a universal storage layer provides benefits that translate into measurable business outcomes. Results can include reduced storage costs, enhanced compliance, and minimized disruptions as well as improved customer experiences that drive new revenue streams.

Our new reality

Most organizations have turned their infrastructure into multi-location designs to capitalize on the unique benefits of each location. Public cloud provides enhanced agility for scale and geographic coverage, while on-premises private cloud and colocation options provide optimizations for greater data control, security, and support for traditional on-premises tools that remain relevant. And edge environments provide support for distributed, de-centralized operations to process data where it is created.

In order for IT departments to thrive within this new reality, CIOs need to help their organizations gain efficient and agile IT operations that deliver consistent service levels across multicloud types and locations. A universal storage layer does just that, providing the right technology and a powerful framework to unleash agility and facilitate breakthrough innovations.

Dell Technologies

As the digital landscape keeps evolving, Dell Technologies remains committed to empowering customers with the tools necessary to drive innovations through applications and data.

Are you ready to unlock the power of software-driven innovation? Learn about Dell cloud storage solutions. 

Intel 

Intel is a world leader in the design and manufacturing of essential technologies that power the cloud and an increasingly smart, connected world. 

^[1] https://www.oracle.com/lu/news/announcement/98-percent-enterprises-adopted-multicloud-strategy-2023-02-09/