Charles Darwin was nothing if not communicative and unchangingly relevant. While many may not have read The Origin of Species, everyone is familiar with the concept of evolution. With Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) hailed as the “…largest segment of software defined storage…” by Network World, and with everyone from governments to hospitals implementing the technology, it’s worth a look back in time at where we came from and what we have evolved into today. Darwin would be proud.
Homo Erectus AKA Integrated Systems
Starting with the Integrated System, businesses went from managing multiple and often disparate systems independently to streamlining these systems and software applications to work together. Businesses could integrate and continue to work with their legacy infrastructure and gained a single point of contact for the entire life-cycle of the infrastructure, but often found themselves locked into the technology stack of major original equipment manufacturers, who made scalability expensive.
Homo Neanderthalensis AKA Converged Infrastructure
Then came the Converged Infrastructure, which combined the server and storage components into a single appliance, provided a single resource pool, and simplified overall management with a faster deployment time. Cost got lower and server and storage resources got simpler, but there were issues. Converged Infrastructure had only server and storage resource components with little thought given to data management (which continued to be a big issue). Many businesses found that to enjoy the convenience of the Converged Infrastructure they couldn’t utilize their existing legacy systems – creating resource islands and complicating the entire issue – the exact opposite of their original goal of simplification!
Homo Sapiens AKA Hyperconverged Infrastructure
HCI hit the IT scene as the most recent evolution of infrastructure convergence. It simplified, lowered cost, consolidated functions and equipment and re-invented data architecture. Legacy infrastructure and services were suddenly extinct, with HCI providing data protection, deduplication, WAN optimization, SSD cache arrays and public cloud gateways among 100’s of other uses. Businesses were spending less, IT was more efficient and productive, automation simplified cumbersome daily tasks, data was better protected and, although it goes without saying, performance was improved. HCI is massively popular with no end in sight.
About Sangfor Technologies
Founded in 2000 and a publicly traded company as of 2018 (SANGFOR STOCK CODE: 300454 (CH)) Sangfor Technologies is the global leading vendor of IT infrastructure solutions specializing in Cloud Computing and Network Security.
