COMMENT
services and applications to each and
every branch location as quickly as
creating new virtual machines in your
data centre. What’s more, technology
is now available to facilitate the
deployment of entirely new branch
locations faster than the physical
location being ready for business.
edge’ whereby technologies such
as virtualisation, compute, storage
and networking are combined as
one unified solution. What this does
is centrally extend the power of
the data centre out to all branches,
sales offices, retail stores, production
facilities, manufacturing plants,
oil rigs, government missions, and
other remote locations. This presents
benefits as infrastructure is simplified
from remote sites while keeping a
company’s data protected, IT and
business teams agile, as well as still
allowing users to remain productive,
irrespective of their circumstance
or distance involved. An outage or
performance slowdown can have
implications on levels of productivity,
leading to direct loss of revenue.
Make way for Zero Branch IT
Applying a Zero Branch IT model
means that CIOs can escape this cycle
by extending the security, resilience
and flexibility of the data centre out to
the edge of the distributed enterprise.
Technology is now able to deliver new
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It’s essential to imagine what is
possible when it comes to adopting
a Zero Branch IT model. There are a
plethora of benefits when rethinking
what can be done at the edge of
hybrid networks, and each should be
carefully considered:
• Quick provisioning of new
applications and services to branch
offices from the data centre
• Gaining central control of all
company data in the data centre –
this enables IT to remove sensitive
information from high-risk locations
without (and this is key), sacrificing
performance or availability at the
branch
• Ability to recover remote locations
from an unplanned outage within
minutes, as opposed of hours or days
• Ability to cut IT Capex and Opex by
eliminating the need to purchase,
maintain, and back up infrastructure
in branch offices
• Simplify IT workloads by completely
eliminating the need for branch
backup
• Scale on the fly by deploying new
branches almost instantly, at
extremely low cost
• Ability to significantly slash Opex
by bringing the management of
all remote and branch locations
back to the central data centre,
simplifying and ratifying the branch
infrastructure required.
To ensure superior application
performance, CIOs should opt for best-
practice approaches to the Zero Branch
IT, hyper-converged edge. This involves
proven virtualisation, storage backup
and WAN optimisation technologies,
regardless of distance, and for all
types of branch applications, whether
they’re traditionally run locally at the
branch, served from on-premises data
centres, or delivered from private or
public clouds. Implementing a solution
TO ENSURE SUPERIOR
APPLICATION
PERFORMANCE, CIOS
SHOULD OPT FOR BEST-
PRACTICE APPROACHES
TO THE ZERO
BRANCH IT, HYPER-
CONVERGED EDGE. THIS
INVOLVES PROVEN
VIRTUALISATION,
STORAGE BACKUP AND
WAN OPTIMISATION
TECHNOLOGIES,
REGARDLESS OF
DISTANCE, AND FOR
ALL TYPES OF BRANCH
APPLICATIONS
that combines storage delivery,
server virtualisation and hybrid-WAN
optimisation technologies, eliminates
the need for physical servers, storage
backup infrastructure at their remote
and branch office (ROBO) locations.
The result of this is dramatic increases
in data security, business continuity,
agility and operational efficiency.
The purpose of IT is to essentially
add value to the bottom line but this
is often constrained when the CIO
and IT operations team is expected
to be nimble, while trying to keep
up with the dispersed islands of IT
infrastructure across branch offices.
This legacy approach to branch IT
makes the CIO’s job increasingly
difficult and hinders their ability to
effectively support the business the
way they should. By applying a Zero
Branch IT model, branches are higher-
performing, disaster-resistant and
more reliable. This will address today’s
business needs, while simultaneously
reducing cost and improving customer
and employee satisfaction. It can also
help a CIO sleep a lot easier at night.
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