July 20169 often comes with a complete in-frastructure overhaul. Over the last five years, the success of converged infrastructure has grown out of the ability to ease the pressure on the infrastructure layer, accelerate time to value for investments and in the process, answer the question of buy versus build. However, for many Asian companies, converged infrastruc-ture platforms remained only in the hands of the biggest enter-prises and large government de-partments. The solution is hyper- converged infrastructure.The Happy Marriage of Midmar-ket and Hyper-Converged InfrastructureWhile large corporations continue to be an important engine in Asia's growth, a large part of the region's success is also tied to the continued success and further development of its small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs). Accounting for more than 96 percent of all enterprises in the ASEAN Economic Community, SMEs contribute between 30 and 53 percent to the region's GDP.A new format of Converged Infrastructure called hyper-con-verged infrastructure takes the best attributes of its bigger brother and brings them to the mid-market space. Hyper-converged Infrastruc-ture provides plug-and-play attri-butes to the Datacentre - it is sim-ple to deploy and manage with a single point of contact. With hyper-converged infrastruc-ture, businesses now have the ability to respond quickly to changing business needs, shorten their innovation curve and ultimately, real-ize digital transfor-mation without the costs and risks associated with traditional infra-structure provisioning.All converged infrastructure types help solve compatibility is-sues between servers, storage sys-tems and network devices. Engi-neered, designed and manufactured as a single `box', converged in-frastructure also reduces costs for cabling, cooling, power and floor space. With built-in IT manage-ment automation, it allows compa-nies based in developing Asian na-tions, lacking deep pools of highly skilled professionals or reliable infrastructure, the ability to pro-vide a higher standard of IT service to their customers, staff and part-ners. In short, it will make them more competitive. Hyper-converged infrastructure also provides capabilities that are particularly helpful to business growth in this region: the option to scale. For companies that are looking to grow but perhaps are not yet prepared to make a signifi-cant financial commitment to their IT budget, scalability is crucial. With hyper-converged infrastruc-ture businesses have the ability to start small and scale up as their business thrives. It should be noted that hy-per-converged infrastructure is not just well-suited for mid-sized companies wanting to start small or on a limited budget, but is also a perfect option for larger enterprises needing an effective and efficient solution for their remote, edge locations. Busi-nesses in Asia, regardless of size, can now easily and quickly re-fresh their IT to meet new business demands. The time of Asia is undoubtedly now and con-verged infra-structure is giv-ing the region the competitive edge and agility it needs. With hyper-converged infrastructure businesses have the ability to start small and scale up as their business thrivesMatt Oostveen
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