Converged systems can offer companies a great deal of value, especially if used properly. The biggest issue facing companies who plan to use converged systems, though, is that they’re not getting everything they could be getting from these systems. A company needs a proper foundation to build on if it’s going to put converged systems to work and get the most out of them. A recent discussion from Dell EMC offered some insight into how to do it.

Building a Converged Systems Foundation

Converged systems won’t give you full value without the right foundation. Thankfully, the points involved will flow fairly smoothly from one to the next, so once you start, you’ll be well on your way.

Plan for a new approach. Your old approach to IT operations may not do the job here. The way to succeed with converged systems is to focus as much as possible on automation. By improving automation, there will be fewer points of failure in the overall system, and it will also allow you to segue more smoothly into the next major point.

Focus on service delivery. Service delivery will ultimately be the most important part of building a foundation for automated systems. Several subcomponents go into the best practices of service delivery, including things like managing the service catalog, managing service assets and their overall configuration, managing incidents, and fulfilling user requests.

Get the right people. This is a big part of any new operation, but with converged systems, it’s even more important. You have several roles to fill—a service catalog manager, an incident manager, and so on—but also you’ll want to have a couple people who are specifically in play to manage the overall operations of the converged platform.

Start small, and stay user-friendly. Now that you’ve defined the roles and have the right people working in those roles, you need to focus on being user-friendly. Build in self-service options, including the use of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) service catalogs. Use automated provisioning to ensure the best outcomes. Most of all, start small; start with your Linux or Windows hosting services first to help make sure you’ve got the bugs worked out in advance.

How to Get Help Building that Converged System Foundation

When the principles seem clear enough but the execution doesn’t, drop us a line at Emcon IT. We not only support Dell EMC, but we also support HP 3Par and NetApp as well. When you want the best foundation to help you get the most out of your converged systems, get in touch with us to get started.