Use Cases
While the trends mentioned previously are driving companies to consider hyperconverged systems,
the benefits to the line-of-business (LOB) users are even more pronounced and often serve as an even
stronger catalyst for consideration and purchase of these systems (see Figure 1):
Simple deployment and rapid scalability. Currently, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is one
of the biggest drivers within the hyperconverged market, and it accounts for an even larger
portion of midmarket hyperconverged system shipments primarily because of the simplicity
that hyperconverged solutions offer. Hyperconverged eliminates the up-front design and
integration work necessary for large VDI deployments. In addition, hyperconverged systems
allow IT resources to scale quickly as the number of business users ramps up.
Simple and lower-cost remote office/branch office (ROBO) solutions. Remote offices and
branch offices, like retail stores, bank branches, or manufacturing plants, play a crucial role in
company operations and often have specialized IT infrastructure needs and challenges. The
locations, though geographically distributed, often must be managed with little to no
specialized IT support. Hyperconverged systems are well suited for this market because they
present IT managers with a simple, lower-cost scaled solution.
Highly available and redundant clusters that lower risks. As enterprise-level applications grow
in complexity, managing the risk of data loss and/or disaster becomes even more important.
With legacy infrastructure, the data backup and disaster recovery process can be complicated
and time consuming at best and completely ineffective at worst. Hyperconverged systems
offer high availability and redundancy because of their multinode deployment capabilities.