The Benefits of Hyperconverged Data Center Infrastructure

Hyperconverged data centers were once a niche technology that mostly appealed to organizations with specialized needs, such as streamlining the management of small and branch offices. Today, many enterprises are now recognizing the value of transitioning their conventional data centers into hyperconverged facilities. Gartner reports that by 2018 hyperconverged integrated systems will represent as much as 35 percent of total converged infrastructure shipments by revenue, up from a low-single-digit base in 2015. Hyperconvergence shares some similarities with converged systems, says Charles King, president and principal analyst at Pund-IT. "Both are highly integrated, highly virtualized solutions," he notes. Yet converged systems generally incorporate specific vendors' hardware components, optimized for specific applications and workloads. "In contrast, hyperconverged solutions are clusters that typically leverage commodity components to support software-defined environments and related functions," King observes.