The Future of Infrastructure is Real-Time
- Details
- Written by Jeb Horton
Why Flexible Infrastructure Consumption is in High Demand and Driving Business Growth
In today's fast-moving business world, markets can shift overnight. Due to weather, supply chains must reroute in real-time, and retailers need to scale instantly during peak shopping periods like Black Friday. Enterprise infrastructure must be just as agile.
Customers expect services to be available immediately, making real-time infrastructure, particularly storage and compute, essential for cost efficiency, transparency, and scalability.
From Static to Real-Time
Traditionally, businesses purchased fixed resources in advance, often leading to wasted capacity or shortages. Real-time infrastructure eliminates these inefficiencies by dynamically allocating resources as needed. Automation, orchestration, and predictive scaling enable companies to respond instantly, streamline workflows, and anticipate demand.
The key to this transformation is flexible infrastructure. Businesses now prioritize cost alignment with revenue, avoiding over-investment in underutilized capacity. Incremental, scalable solutions help close the consumption gap, ensuring efficient use of resources.
Subscription Models Drive Agility
Subscription and pay-as-you-go models allow businesses to scale infrastructure as required. Inspired by consumer services like Netflix and Spotify, these models allow IT leaders to manage costs effectively while enabling innovation.
An elastic scaling model is particularly valuable in emerging technologies like AI. Canadian firms investing in AI, such as those in healthcare and financial services, must experiment before scaling. A flexible infrastructure lets them start small, validate their models, and expand without significant upfront investments.
Additionally, real-time infrastructure supports the seamless integration of AI, IoT, and 5G networks, reducing the need for costly system overhauls.
Reducing Waste and Optimizing Usage
Real-time infrastructure minimizes wasted capacity through just-in-time provisioning, closely matching resource allocation to actual needs. While enterprise infrastructure isn't yet as precisely metered as utilities like water or electricity, vendors are narrowing the gap by offering smaller allocation units.
For example, Hitachi Vantara's Everflex allows real-time storage monitoring and quick expansion, ensuring businesses don't overcommit resources. This model benefits Canadian enterprises managing large-scale data, from government agencies to financial institutions.
Enabling Business Growth
A flexible infrastructure accelerates growth by allowing businesses to scale operations efficiently. For instance, a startup launching an AI-powered customer service tool can start with minimal infrastructure costs, reinvesting savings into development. As adoption increases, real-time scalability ensures they can expand seamlessly.
Companies also gain greater agility, adapting quickly to market shifts without being locked into pre-paid infrastructure investments. Agility enhances competitiveness by reducing deployment time for new initiatives and enabling rapid pivots when necessary.
Technology Advantages
Beyond cost and scalability benefits, real-time infrastructure significantly improves deployment speed. Traditional IT models required lengthy provisioning cycles, delaying innovation. Now, continuous integration and deployment enable DevOps teams to roll out new applications in minutes rather than weeks.
Additionally, real-time monitoring improves system transparency. Instead of reacting to outages after they occur, businesses can proactively identify and resolve issues, reducing downtime and maintaining service quality. This capability is critical in industries like telecom and banking, where reliability is paramount.
The Future of Real-Time Infrastructure
The shift toward flexible infrastructure will only accelerate. Vendors continue to refine their offerings, providing more granular scalability to better match Canadian organizations' real-time needs. While enterprise infrastructure may never reach the exact efficiency of utilities, it's moving closer.
As organizations embrace AI, big data, and automation, real-time infrastructure will be the backbone of innovation, ensuring Canadian businesses remain competitive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Jeb Horton is the Senior Vice President of Global Services at Hitachi Vantara, overseeing Professional Services, Managed Services, and Education Services across multiple industries, including Financial Services and Healthcare. Previously, he was Vice President of Delivery for the Americas at DXC, managing a $4 billion business with 25,000 employees, and held various roles at legacy companies such as EDS, HP, and HPE, focusing on analytics, transformation, and business integration. He played a key role in integrating EDS Applications Services into HP after their 2008 merger and has also worked at Hitachi Consulting, Deloitte Consulting, and Andersen Business Consulting.
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