The accelerated rate of decision-making brought on by the pandemic was the perfect example of why this kind of buy-in is necessary. “What we’re finding is some companies are looking to go to that next level, but if their culture isn't set up in a way where they're willing to embrace that increased pace of change, it's going to be a challenge,” he said.
“And in those scenarios, we've had conversations to let people know that it's a bigger issue than just this project. They may have to work with their executive team or others to understand what it would take to make that change, and then get that support from above” because without that sort of commitment in place, organizations will face greater difficulty in making their plans become a reality, he explained.
Strategic Partnerships Can Make Modernization More Successful
Schmidt spoke about the advantages CDW could offer in assisting customers who might be considering a modernization effort. “We have many long-standing relationships in place, so we are able to get in early on and help people early in the assessment and design phases of their particular projects. We have many world-class engineers that are on staff that have expertise and experience in different areas. These individuals have seen a lot, and they can give a lot of feedback that will help to evaluate different solutions.”
Corey Carrico, senior field marketing manager at CDW, joined the conversation to share the story of a global medical device manufacturer that experienced a surge in demand for their product throughout the pandemic. Due to that accelerated growth, their infrastructure management couldn’t keep up.
Carrico said the company was “trying to replicate that custom three-tier data center for multiple locations, and it was just becoming too taxing. You know, the current environment had multiple vendors, support was decentralized, and in many cases when you expand that globally, it just introduces some inefficiencies, especially around issue resolution.”
In evaluating the company’s situation, Carrico said CDW “initially took the approach of, as rapidly as possible, scaling that initial data center infrastructure. But it quickly became apparent that we needed something more agile. And so, we pulled in and did a hyper-converged infrastructure workshop with the customer, which allowed us to better understand the requirements and match them up with the various platforms and services that are available to the customer.”