Converged infrastructure adoption has grown in recent years, leading  many distributors already specializing in storage or networking to expand their offerings for the infrastructure stack.

Datalink, a datacenter services and solutions provider, has made it possible for distribution channels such as NetApp/Cisco FlexPod, VCE Vblock, EMC VSPEX, HDS storage, VMware vCHS, to adopt to this trend by expanding to a full datacenter focus.

Wikibon analyst Stu Miniman recently caught up with Datalink’s Practice Director of Virtual Data Centers Kent Christensen and Director of Cloud Service Management Mark Myers and discussed the trends surrounding IT, converged infrastructure, virtualization, and future trends such as IT as a service.  With this segment (full video below), Miniman get the opportunity to drill down on the details of how IT-as-a-Service fits with current trends surrounding converged infrastructure, as Datalink discusses the ways in which it helps customers manage the rapid change now taking place in the datacenter.

For context, it’s useful to note a recent post from Miniman, where he points out that “converged infrastructure offerings are a tool for helping customers advance along this cloud adoption spectrum by creating resource pools, which allow for more agility and simplified operations. While converged infrastructure offerings promise simplified deployment and operations, channel partners like Datalink still have work to do with ‘integrating’ the solution into a customer environment.”

During Miniman’s segment with Datalink, Christensen outlines the role of converged infrastructure, going on to discuss the integration process for customer environments, saying that converged infrastructure plays a huge role in giving customers a head start by creating resource pools that allow for more agility and simplified operations, and not deal with multiple pieces from different vendors.

As Miniman mentioned, though converged infrastructure offers simplified deployment and operations, Datalink still has to deal with integrating the solution to a customer environment. Christensen explained that there are still a lot of things to do in converged infrastructure, such as making sure it has the right components to meet customers’ needs.  Then there’s the matter of getting the applications out to customers, and how to automate that while creating a cloud-like service offering.  But it all starts with identifying what the customer needs in order to be more useful.

Datalink helps companies move towards what the company calls the “Virtual Dynamic Data Center” and IT as a Service (ITaaS).  Datalink measures customer progress along “cloud maturity stages”: consolidation, integration, automation, ITaaS and federation.  Here more about Datalink’s processes for determining the best solution for each customer, and how the company’s core principles impact its distribution channel in order to provide such an integrated offering to end users.

Watch full video here.