Revolutionize agility and flexibility.
Accelerate time to market.
Mitigate risk without inhibiting innovation.
Reduce CapEx and OpEx.
Whitepaper
realize
your software-defined
vision
with the Digital Data Center from Atos
How to approach your journey
to the Software-Defined Data Center?
When he described Facebook’s
operating philosophy as “move fast with a stable infrastructure”, Mark Zuckerberg could have been defining the template for today’s most successful and prosperous enterprises.
But for CIOs who must deliver this vision, the task is challenging:
• How will I create and manage an infrastructure that is flexible, scalable and secure, yet easy to manage?
• How can I help the business respond with speed and agility to changing business demands, and accelerate time to market?
• How should I create innovative business models, go to market strategies and supplier relationships?
• How can IT strengthen competitive advantage by enabling the business to offer attractive, differentiated services?
And of course, traditional demands like operational excellence, trust, compliance, and delivering an impeccable customer experience remain as relevant as ever.
Is software-defined
architecture the answer?
Many CIOs are evaluating how a software-defined approach to the data center can help achieve their challenging objectives.
This white paper will help enterprise and public sector CIOs to recognize the opportunity presented by the Digital Data Center from Atos. It will demonstrate how the Digital Data Center from Atos offers an immediate opportunity for CIOs to realize their vision for an agile, responsive and affordable Software-Defined Data Center.
Digital Data Center: the right
vision at the right time
The Software-Defined Data Center is VMware’s blueprint for a fully-automated data center in which server, network and compute are virtualized and managed by software.
VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger describes the Software-Defined Data Center as delivering “more availability, higher utilization, lower cost, unlimited scalability, greater speed in developing applications and provisioning technology services, and the agility to reconfigure and repurpose infrastructure as the
business needs.”
He continues “the essence of Software-Defined Data Center is automation. The software layer replaces management with automation to further increase operational simplicity. Things happen fast and changes are made with a minimum of human intervention.”
That’s what makes
the Software-Defined
Data Center such
a powerful driver of
innovation and agility
in today’s dynamic
digital world.
Time to accelerate
But in describing the Software-Defined Data Center as “…an evolving architectural and operational philosophy, not a product that you can buy that has a demonstrated return on investment (ROI)”1, Forrester highlight why the Software-Defined Data Center may not meet the needs of
enterprises with an urgent need for greater agility and a sharper competitive edge.
That’s where the Digital Data Center from Atos comes in.
The Digital Data Center from
Atos is the Software-Defined
Data Center as-a-Service
With Atos organizations can enjoy the compelling benefits of the Software-Defined Data Center right away by consuming them as-a-service.
The Digital Data Center from Atos combines four technologies: existing server virtualization, software-defined networking, software-defined storage and management/automation.
• All elements of the data center, including networking, storage and compute are virtualized and delivered as a managed service.
• The control layer is abstracted from the physical layer, enabling dynamic provisioning of data center resources based upon software and policies.
• As a result, the data center can react to the speed of enterprise requirements, and businesses can easily match data center resources to application workloads.
A Digital Data Center from Atos project spans expert Atos Advisory, Design, Build and Transformation services, as well as the Digital Data Center managed service itself. This end-to-end approach ensures CIOs gain the maximum possible business value for their investment.
1 Forrester, The Software Defined Data Center is Still A Work in Progress, August 2014
The Digital Data Center from Atos replaces slower, more expensive, less automated processes with policy-based automation.
It enables CIOs and their teams to move towards a service catalogue model, so that users and internal customers can self-serve quickly and easily without waiting for bespoke configurations for every new workload.
With greater automation comes a significantly reduced risk of human error; and less likelihood of costly service interruptions. So the business can deliver the innovative, highly available that satisfy customers and maximize revenues.
In Gartner’s view, software-defined environments like the Digital Data Center from Atos enables “…agility through policy-based automation of the data center and facilities infrastructure. [It] separates management controls and services from the hardware infrastructure, thus potentially enabling infrastructure automation and optimization innovations in the software layer.”2
The Digital Data Center from Atos replaces slow,
costly and error-prone manual processes with
policy-based automation.
Traditional Data Center vs. the Digital Data Center from Atos
Software Layer
Property
Hardware Intelligence
Network/Storage/Sercurity/Server
Traditional Data Center
Manual Operations
Orchestration Layer (common to cloud)
Software
Layer Intelligence
Commodity Hardware
Digital Data Center
Automated Policy Based Operations
Enable
unprecedented infrastructure automation
2 Gartner, What Is the Value of a Software-Defined Data Center? 10 September 2014
In a business climate where products and services evolve at relentless pace,
“data centers are under pressure to move away from a monolithic delivery capability unable to handle projects requiring greater speed, innovation or more focus on risk management.”3 The Digital Data Center from Atos helps CIOs deliver services at true enterprise speed. With management and control elevated to the software layer, IT teams benefit from portable workflows that move seamlessly between
environments from development to production, consolidating production and testing workloads on the same infrastructure.
In addition, the Digital Data Center from Atos is specifically designed for fast initial setup, smooth growth and rapid scalability. So as well as offering an immediate solution to the frustration of inflexible infrastructure, the Digital Data Center from Atos enables businesses to expand and grow with ease, for example when extending the branch network.
And with everything managed at the software layer, change and expansion are always straightforward to manage.
As well as offering an
immediate solution to
the frustration of
inflexible infrastructure,
the Digital Data Center
from Atos enables
businesses to expand
and grow with ease.
Accelerate
time to market
3 Gartner, The Three Data Center Personalities Necessary for Your Digital Business, February 2015
Revolutionize
infrastructure agility and flexibility
The demand for more responsive and agile infrastructure is inspiring CIOs to explore new sourcing models.
Gartner recommend “before selecting Software-Defined Data Center solutions, know your agility, operational efficiency and cost containment drivers, deploying Software-Defined Data Center
opportunistically and in a phased manner, to meet your needs.”4 And their top consideration? “The first is agility:
How quickly can business units source technology infrastructure to meet business objectives?”5
Because it’s designed to offer a non-disruptive roll-out, and to work out-of-the box, the Digital Data Center from Atos immediately impacts the areas of your data center that impede flexibility. So you can:
• Make better use of hardware and software investments, and improve the agility of virtualized legacy applications
• Remove the need to redesign or re-architect applications
• Enable the consolidation of servers, network, storage and security
• Span VMware-based cloud environments in a hybrid model
• Reduce maintenance windows and
enable effective failure containment
“…before selecting Software-Defined Data Center
solutions, know your agility, operational efficiency
and cost containment drivers, deploying
Software-Defined Data Center opportunistically
and in a phased manner…”
Gartner, September 2014
As a result, CIOs and their teams will be in a strong position to consistently deliver the agility and flexibility the business demands.
How the Digital Data Center from Atos paves the way to your Cloud journey
Based on the latest, most advanced virtualization capabilities, the Digital Data Center from Atos is designed to help you manage resources more flexibly, and to lay the foundations for IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS environments and services.
Integrating seamlessly with Atos Canopy Cloud and other VMware cloud-based platforms, it’s a powerfully effective way to drive maximum value from your hybrid cloud environment.
4 Gartner, September 2014
5 Forrester, Key I&O Trends to watch in 2014 Part 3, June 2014
Strengthen
innovation and competitive differentiation
Atos and VMware:
an alliance of market leaders The software stack in the Digital Data Center from Atos is powered by VMware – the market leaders in virtualization solutions, giving you state-of-the art IT benefits that deliver lasting business impact.
Security is powered by Atos from our multi-disciplinary centers of excellence. Services spanning Advisory, Design, Build, Transform and Operate are also provided by Atos: Europe’s number one IT services provider.
Of course, CIOs will demand the technical advantages of the Digital Data Center from Atos translate into clear and measurable business benefits. In Gartner’s words,
“where once data centers were seen as systems of record, increasingly they are being viewed as systems of innovation and systems of differentiation.”6 Accelerate innovation
The Digital Data Center from Atos is a powerful means to drive innovation because it enables the creation of groundbreaking business models without months of bespoke hands-on configuration and testing.
Using software-based management, requests for new services can be met more rapidly, and SLAs fulfilled with confidence. This will empower the business to outmanoeuvre competitors on the strength of its innovative products and services as well as speed to market.
Atos and VMware:
Achieve compelling cost savings Thanks to its unique blend of operational efficiencies and commodity hardware utilization, the Digital Data Center from Atos can reduce CapEx by up to 15%
and OpEx by up to 30%.
6 Gartner, Market Trends: Navigating the Disruptive Forces That Will Define Data Centers of the Future, October 2014
Mitigate
risk without inhibiting innovation
Of course, the advantages of Digital Data Center from the Atos are meaningless if they pose an unacceptable risk.
And this is especially true when adding new services into an already-complex data center environment that mixes mission-critical legacy systems with the latest virtualization techniques. Trust and compliance are critical in every
implementation. Gartner highlights public and private cloud as an additional potential source of concern, noting that
“data centers will have a significant increase in risk as they move toward a more open and hybrid model.”7
At an operational level, the Digital Data Center from Atos addresses risk in the areas you would expect:
• Reducing human error through software-driven automation and control.
• Enhancing security through delivery of services from secure Atos data centers (or on-premise if you choose) alongside state-of-the art firewall and DR.
• Providing easy and rapid scalability that reduces the likelihood of unplanned outages.
Risk mitigation across
the full project lifecycle
Atos Consult, Architect and
Transformation services play a pivotal role in de-risking your Digital Data Center deployment – helping ensure your Digital Data Center from Atos achieves the very best result. Our end-to-end approach incorporates three valuable services.
Consult & Architect
• An upfront assessment of your existing data center environment and evaluation of how well it meets your current business needs.
• Capacity planning, future state architecture creation and roadmap.
• Design of software-defined infrastructure, automation and orchestration tools and definition of best practices to create an operational Software-Defined Data Center framework.
Transform
• Transition to a software-defined architecture within your data center.
• Migration to Atos data centers and/or your own data centers.
• Production deployment and go-live, then transition to operational support.
Operate
• Your Digital Data Center managed service: simple and agile provisioning of pre-configured virtualized compute, storage and network resources.
Take advantage of the Digital
Data Center from Atos now
Talk with your Atos at [email protected]
or discover more at www.atos.net/ddc
7 Gartner, The Software-Defined Data Center Is Still A Work In Progress, August 2014
Atos, the Atos logo, Atos Consulting, Atos Worldgrid, Worldline, BlueKiwi, Bull, Canopy the Open Cloud Company, Yunano, Zero Email, Zero Email Certified and The Zero Email Company are registered trademarks of the Atos group.
July 2015. © 2015 Atos.
About Atos
Atos SE (Societas Europaea) is a leader in digital services with 2014 pro forma annual revenue of circa € 11 billion and 93,000 employees in 72 countries. Serving a global client base, the Group provides Consulting & Systems Integration services, Managed Services & BPO, Cloud operations, Big Data & Cyber-security solutions, as well as transactional services through Worldline, the European leader in the payments and transactional services industry. With its deep technology expertise and industry knowledge, the Group works with clients across different business sectors: Defense, Financial Services, Health, Manufacturing, Media, Utilities, Public sector, Retail, Telecommunications, and Transportation.
Atos is focused on business technology that powers progress and helps organizations to create their firm of the future. The Group is the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Olympic & Paralympic Games and is listed on the Euronext Paris market. Atos operates under the brands Atos, Atos Consulting, Atos Worldgrid, Bull, Canopy, and Worldline.
