UPDATED 13:25 EDT / JUNE 05 2017

CLOUD

Evolve or fail: hybrid cloud and the modern data center

With the digital transformation and data migration to the cloud currently sweeping the information technology industry, companies are beginning to understand what they need is not a few simple hardware upgrades here and there as in the past, but a complete makeover.

And while most traditional IT organizations are spending the vast majority of their budgets on maintenance and operation, at the same time many are coming to the realization that to remain competitive they must become much faster, more data-centric and do more with fewer resources, according to Todd Pavone (pictured), chief operating officer, Converged Platforms and Solutions Division, at Dell EMC, Dell Technologies Inc.’s infrastructure group.

In fact, the role of the IT organization itself is evolving beyond just a support function into a critical part of the business directly impacting success, Pavone added.

“Years ago, IT was just a support function,” he said. “It is now the differentiator [between] if you’ll succeed or fail. Your budgets are flat or decreasing, your users are asking to do more faster [and] the evolution of change is at a crazy pace. So as a CIO [chief information officer], you have to do something different. You have to transform.”

Pavone spoke with host Rebecca Knight (@knightrm) and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor), of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live-streaming studio, during Dell EMC World in Las Vegas, Nevada. They discussed the evolution of the IT industry and chief information officer role, as well as what factors organizations consider most important when transitioning to the new technology. (* Disclosure below.)

Hybrid cloud and the importance of time-to-market

The modernization of the IT industry affects every business differently, and there are plenty of more cautious traditional companies that want to ease into the new technology, according to Pavone. But many of Dell EMC’s customers are seeing the benefit of transforming as quickly as possible to more quickly take advantage of that profitability. This is making hybrid cloud and converged and hyper-converged infrastructure implementation a very hot market, and Dell has positioned itself to help those eager customers capitalize on that market as soon as possible, he added.

“At the tip of the pyramid is our hybrid cloud solution,” Pavone said. “So this is where companies may want to deploy a turnkey hybrid cloud, from application all the way to infrastructure, and within a very short period of time have a fully enabled running cloud that they could offer to their end-user customers.”

Companies are also seeing the benefit of buying a turnkey system from vendors like Dell instead of building their own, mainly because those vendors have the expertise to implement the new technology and migrate customer data in a fraction of the time, Pavone explained. In an industry evolving as fast as IT, time-to-market is one highest priorities of any business, he added.

“In the engineered systems landscape […] it’s all about speed to deliver,” Pavone stated. “We know if customers were to build things out themselves, it would take them 140 to 150 days. We know we can do it in 45 days.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of Dell EMC World 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell EMC World. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial influence on content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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