Data Center

Digital Transformation Begins with a Modern Data Center

Businesses need a solid infrastructure foundation on which to innovate.

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Ryan has been a magazine and newspaper editor for 21 years, with the last 15 covering a variety of bases for CDW’s family of tech magazines. As Editor in Chief, he works on developing editorial strategy and is always on the lookout for new writing talent and sharing great stories with the IT world. In his spare time, Ryan enjoys spending time with his family, biking and obsessively following Iowa Hawkeye sports and Cubs baseball.

More than ever, business leaders know that long-term success demands digital transformation. To compete, they must think differently about how to leverage technology to drive efficiencies, meet customer demands and attract top talent.

Yet companies can’t achieve much without a modern infrastructure. True transformations are built on solid foundations.

Data storage, management and security are prerequisites to digital success for almost every business. According to a survey included in “The Modern IT Infrastructure Insight Report” by CDW, most senior IT leaders said they seek better data security, increased productivity and greater business agility with their IT investments. And they want to achieve all that while reducing infrastructure costs.

Modernize the Data Center in a Multitude of Ways

A modernized data center solution can make it all possible, and there are plenty of options. Should a business maintain all of its data on-premises, move all of its workloads into the cloud or develop a hybrid approach? Should it move toward the scalability and high availability of hyperconverged infrastructure or stick with a more traditional approach?

The answer depends on the needs of the business, of course. For example, Roysons, a provider of coating and lamination services, has just one data center and 100 employees; it needed more storage to support its growth, so it added a storage area network to its existing infrastructure. However, national nonprofit Boys Town concluded that hyperconverged infrastructure gives it the flexibility to grow at its own pace, while reducing costs.

In choosing its path, each business started with a clear understanding of its current and future needs and worked with trusted advisers to arrive at the best solution. That’s the right way to approach any kind of IT upgrade — especially a data center modernization effort, which is often the foundation upon which all future digital transformation is built.

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