The Power of a Lego Infrastructure to Turn Your Data into an Actionable Impact at Market Speed

Over the course of the next decade, the winners will be those organizations who can make sense of and protect their data. At this stage, companies like Apple and Alphabet are taking the lead. Data is currency and considered a company’s most important commodity. In fact, the avalanche of data ensures brands can offer more personalised experiences and recommendations to customers. Yet, these customers also value the privacy of their data - as they should.

One of the most transformative innovations to spur the digital era is the Internet. With increasing connectivity, including the Internet of Things, consumers use digital interfaces for education, social sharing, shopping, and entertainment. Invariably, the COVID pandemic has served to help the trend skyrocket. At the same time, brands no longer have complete control over data regarding their products and services.

In the past, many businesses might talk with customers face-to-face to make a sale. Today, customers are more informed and armed with knowledge about what they want and where they want to make their purchases. Therefore, customer data is the most potent asset an organization can have.

As a result, companies that are purveyors of data will thrive. Making sense of that data helps to clear the confusion. Customers use multiple screens for work and play. Naturally, companies and brands also need help to adequately protect data in the regulation age with compliance measures in place to meet global mandates defined by the GDPR, CCPA, and other industry-specific regulations.

Whether it is contact or financial information, data usage is protected by law in the UK. How you decide to protect your data is paramount to meeting evolving consumer demands. So then, let’s talk about how hyper-converged systems and a Lego infrastructure can help.

How do Lego systems work?

The concept of data management started as unified mainframes until decentralization became popular in the 1980s and 1990s. By the 2010s, converged systems became the prevailing trend - and this isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

What is a Lego infrastructure exactly? How does a Lego infrastructure benefit your business? A Lego infrastructure combines management of these key areas:

• Network
• Server
• Computing
• Storage
• Virtualisation

Instead of managing systems using outdated and disparate silos, you can seamlessly integrate your infrastructure with your preferred components. In fact, you can use multiple IT assets together in a way that makes the most sense for your company instead of cobbling together disparate technologies. Due to this type of infrastructure, you can provision your resources as a single and efficient system. Further, it becomes much easier to determine resource availability from component to component.

Think of a Lego infrastructure as separate pieces of hardware that fit together perfectly, similar to Lego blocks. Yet, it can depict a standalone environment without having to spend countless hours reconfiguring each component.

A Lego infrastructure's objective is to remove data centre management's complexity and mitigate any issues around hardware compatibility. Here is a list of some of the benefits below:

• Decreased cabling
• Reduced pooling
• Reduced cooling costs
• Increased visibility
• Enhanced scalability
• Vendor-validated solutions

To start, Lego systems are pre-configured to meet the needs of your infrastructure requirements. Not to mention, you get the tools you need to secure, manage, and maintain the environment within a web-based console. Moreover, you can access specialized resources for potential issues such as disaster recovery. As a result, this infrastructure is a good fit for small-to-midsize firms. By adding new components, you get to expand capacity without the friction. Picture each component as a building block. Even if you removed a piece or two, the entire is still functional and works as intended.

Your vendor can provide pre-configured hardware recommendations that isolate specific data centre workloads - such as customer account details. As a result, you can remove the guesswork, and turn your data into an actionable impact at market speed. However, you can also decide to buy separate appliances that align with your data management and data protection initiatives. The Lego infrastructure puts the freedom to decide in your hands, which can be indispensable while overcoming the challenges associated with the outdated siloed approach.

What’s nice is you can scale up or down depending on surges in traffic. So then, you can respond quickly to changes in your industry and consumer demands. You have greater control. In addition, it is crucial to select your hardware wisely to ensure it is the infrastructure that offers the protection and speed you require. The good news is the Lego infrastructure is designed to make it easy to lock-and-load. When customers demand layers of protection, and better service, you want to have the ability to overcome the data firehose and manage it all seamlessly. Without an adequate infrastructure, trying to keep up with the rapid expansion of data can become the stuff of nightmares.

You could use a cloud infrastructure, but do you really want to turn over data control to someone else? A hybrid cloud would be a mix of private and public clouds; again, you don’t have complete control of your data. In terms of data privacy, an on-premise Lego infrastructure, gives your company full control over real-time, structured, and unstructured data. You are no longer vulnerable to breaches imposed on a cloud vendor, which happens more frequently than is desired. For instance, the recent Verizon cloud breach exposed 1.5 billion sensitive files. It makes sense that some of the biggest business data challenges are as follows:

• Cloud security
• Maintaining the current IT infrastructure
• Data protection/recovery/business continuity
• Driving the customer experience
• Budget constraints
• Managing data growth
• Mobile device security
• Finding qualified talent
• Controlling costs and justifying IT investment

Can you relate to any of these challenges? Many businesses do, and are highly concerned with increasing profitability, attracting and retaining new customers while decreasing the costs associated with IT.

How can you increase your data infrastructure’s performance with confidence?

When selecting a hardware vendor, 80% of IT decision-makers look for companies they respect and trust. Using one vendor can eliminate the complexity of managing multiple support contracts and enables your infrastructure to scale without detailed planning or configurations. Instead, you can install a new appliance in minutes. In terms of hardware, IBM is one of the most popular and secure options.

In fact, the IBM FlashSystem 5000 family offers micro-latency performance to help detect and prevent fraud at market speed. Within the IBM hardware portfolio, FlashSystem 5000 is the fastest-growing product line. With good reason, it allows you to process massive quantities of data quickly. Also, with the FlashSystem 5000 line, you can eliminate the thousands of spinning discs and significantly reduce your rack footprint which saves on both power and cooling costs. In terms of gaining a competitive advantage, how would you use these features to your benefit?

If you knew you could make faster and more data-driven business decisions, would you? If so, then the IBM FlashSystem 5000 line has already provided value powered by IBM Flashcore technology, IBM microlatency modules, and hardware-accelerated input/output (i/o). IBM FlashSystem 5000 offers a flexible data management solution that scales with your business while reducing IT spend and complexity.

Are you ready for your business to reach its next evolution?