IN this segment, we will take a quick look at how this fast-emerging sector is shaping up in Malaysia and watch out for new players that are fast gaining ground in this market. We note that — in the latest Gartner Report on Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualisation Infrastructure of August 2016 — there are more Chinese companies moving into this technology play in a very big way.

End of blades

We are quite certain that blade technology that dominated the x86 space, coupled with hypervisors, is evolving into something bigger, and is becoming more cost-effective. Traditional attempts at virtualisation of servers and storage have gained acceptance among the government and university sectors in Malaysia. They have bought big blade servers and SAN (storage area network) storage over the years, and times are changing, rapidly requiring a rethinking of how such infrastructure must change.

Blade servers are expensive to maintain, although they work very well. They allow a data centre to be more compact and neatly placed in racks, but they are basically individual servers in a blade format instead of separate independent enclosures.

Let us fast forward to this year after Budget 2017 was announced in October last year. What is certain is that budgets for universities and government agencies have decreased by at least 20% to 30%. Faced with this serious lack of money, how can these entities maintain their service levels for their users, notwithstanding the need to grow?

Enter a new way of information technology (IT) planning. Let us consider IT as a Service (ITaaS), where it is a serious solution that will provide more IT services at a lower cost.

Hyper-converged infrastructure

A hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is a type of infrastructure system with a software-centric architecture that tightly integrates computing, storage, networking, virtualisation resources and other technologies from scratch in a commodity hardware box supported by a single vendor.

There are different kinds of HCI supplied by different vendors. Here in Malaysia, we get the traditional IT vendors like VMware, Microsoft, Oracle and Citrix. These vendors are not providing the same categories of HCI. But they are well-known names that IT directors do not have a problem recognising and talk to when ITaaS is required. However, they are mostly software-only vendors.

The first to push out such an incredible idea of an HCI is Nutanix, which changed the commercial market’s view that a new type of combined server and storage virtualisation can actually work with generic x86 hardware. The use of the Google File System and hypervisors from VMware gave Nutanix a leadership in the dramatic shift in how servers can now be configured.

These vendors provide the ability to virtualise processors, memory and storage across an x86 platform. The only challenge is that they are expensive. This usually causes IT directors to stop in their tracks and not move forward to try out an HCI implementation.

But why is this shift in building IT infrastructure so important?

ITaaS and SDDC ideas

You must now be aware that HCI technology is a key element in delivering the reality of ITaaS. New data centres can now become fully software-defined, hence the name Software Defined Data Centre (SDDC).

In a new Internet world whose computing and storage demands are so unpredictable, there must be a way to address sudden growth, peaks and troughs of usage with a good optimisation plan. Gone are the days when your users will tolerate months before they are provisioned. The world has created users with little patience. When they want it, they want to get it immediately.

The likes of Amazon, Google and Azure have real implementations of ITaaS in various fashions. All we need to know now is that the concepts of ITaaS works and the technology enabling it is now available in Malaysia.

The futuristic idea of SDDCs where all the major components of IT can be provisioned dynamically is now possible in Malaysia. These include the ability to virtualise servers, storage, networks as well as networking facilities. SDDCs are no longer a pie in the sky, but a serious option for IT directors to implement immediately.

The shift in building IT infrastructure in Malaysia will help IT directors provide world-class service that is dynamic, highly responsive, resilient and complete. This will transform their ability to address IT needs. The IT team will be able to combine their expertise in a single platform to dynamically design, allocate and reallocate resources, including all networks and networking facilities.

Doing more with less money

Universities and the government cannot keep squeezing their vendors. It will come a point in time where the squeezing of costs will have no meaning. If vendors do not make money, these vendors will cut corners or pull out. It will jeopardise customers for sure.

IT directors need to derive more value from their existing infrastructure, but these technologies only offer a limited way of optimisation and it is not easy to do so. The current virtualisation software also costs a lot and creates a challenge to keep paying for high maintenance costs. Doing more of the same will never resolve the smaller budget problem. This is sheer insanity.

It must be clear to IT directors that with the constant pressure of smaller budgets, they must immediately look into changing their IT infrastructure to ITaaS. Their current data centres must evolve into SDDCs, starting with the Disaster Recovery site.

IT budgets must be combined so that the sum of servers, storage, networks and networking facilities are greater than the individual components. This new way of planning must be done in order to formulate a better IT environment to face constant budget constraints.

If IT directors are worried about cost, then that worry is now over. In Malaysia, there are big players who are not your traditional vendors who have serious offerings in this area. And they are pricing it very aggressively.

Enter the Chinese companies

Two Chinese companies made it to the Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for x86 virtualisation. Huawei is a big company venturing to copy the likes of HP and IBM, offering a very strong HCI offering. They provide the hardware and software required to virtualise servers and storage.

The other company that made it for the first time is Sangfor Technologies. It provides the widest types of virtualisation to enable ITaaS. As a newbie in HCI, Sangfor leveraged its advantage to incorporate its own networking solutions to the standard virtualisation platform. Sangfor introduced the Network Facilities Virtualisation, beyond Network Virtualisation, a major step to making SDDCs a reality. Sangfor Hyper-Converged Infrastructure consolidates traditional hardware-appliance-based security, IP networks, storage networks, servers and storage into one tier of commodity hardware (x86server). The foundations of all these are server virtualisation, storage virtualisation and network virtualisation, on top of that it has network function virtualisation integration including all its Gartner Magic Quadrant listed network applications, such as NGAF, IAM and Wano.

In Malaysia, Sangfor has been working with one of Malaysia’s fastest-growing system integrators (SI) called MYI Technologies. It is well equipped with expertise for the complete suite of Sangfor solutions as well as being a trusted cloud service provider. Together with Sangfor, MYI offers consultation and implementation services for ITaaS, private cloud as well as SDDCs in Malaysia.

Reliability

 Gartner’s Magic Quadrant reports usually list US technology companies, but of late, the Chinese companies have been listed as well. It means that these companies are doing very well in the technology segment, but they may not be as complete in their capability to deliver in markets other than China. That is where they partner with local SI companies to complete the picture. However, only in those markets where they have good local SI partners will they be able to deliver. Over time, there will be a few more Chinese IT companies that will make it to this highly acclaimed list.

For IT directors, they would rely on a solid IT principal vendor who must keep developing the technology and to work in partnership with a local SI who must be able to have the required professional expertise as well as having a strong relationship with the principal IT vendor. This will ensure that all required skill transfers and second- and third-level support will be supported well.

Answer to smaller IT budgets

IT directors must quickly think through how they are to address the growing needs of IT with a smaller budget. The only way is to have highly resilient, dynamically adaptable, cost-effective infrastructure. The Chinese companies are aggressively priced, making the technology most affordable. Local SI companies are very capable of putting the entire solution together while providing local support with extensive technical expertise. They claim that there are also significant savings in time to deliver services by up to 80%, as well as a reduction in server costs with all the benefits of SDDCs by at least 30%.

This is a lethal combination to create just the value for money required for today’s IT directors, especially in the government and university sectors.

Ng Kien Lock (KL.consulting.training@gmail.com) is an IT industry veteran on the lookout for technology to be leveraged for business pragmatism.