IT Trends
According to Evergreen Systems, in a White Paper sponsored by HP Software and Solutions, a consensus is developing around a few priorities in IT Spending. For example, 84% of IT organizations view automation as a top investment priority for delivering business outcomes. Additionally, 85% of IT organizations agree that automation is important in deploying, provisioning, and managing virtualized environments. Clearly, these trends will create opportunities, but how best to capitalize on them?
Evergreen Systems elaborates on several best practices currently in use. One example is consolidation. Many organizations are consolidating their IT functions into centralized servers, thus making it easier to comply with governmental regulations and back up data. Another important practice has become creating ways for data to be constantly available. It is no longer sufficient to simply store data; it must be instantaneously available. An interesting corollary to this practice is the emerging trend of creating systems which automatically redirect users to back-up pathways to data in the event of a human or natural disaster.
Hewlett Packard has succeeded in staying ahead of the IT systems curve, through its Data Center Automation (DCA) software. According to Forrester Research, which conducted a thorough study of this field, DCA was rated as the best product with the largest overall market share. Its features include virtualization, network/server/storage automation, and recurring security updates.
