The word “CONVERGENCE” is boiling over as the IT industry goes gaga over darlings like Simplivity and Nutanix, and the hyper-convergence market. Yet, if we take a step back and remove our emotional attachment from the frenzy, we realize that the application and implementation of hyper-convergence technologies forgot one crucial element – The other people and the other offices!
ROBOs (remote offices branch offices) are part of the organization, and often they are given the shorter end of the straw. ROBOs are like the family’s black sheeps. You know they are there but there is little mention of them most of the time.
Of course, through the decades, there are efforts to consolidate the organization’s circle to include ROBOs but somehow, technology was lacking. FTP used to be a popular but crude technology that binds the branch offices and the headquarter’s operations and data services. FTP is still used today, in countries where network bandwidth costs a premium. Data cloud services are beginning to appear of part of the organization’s outreaching strategy to include ROBOs but the fear of security weaknesses, data breaches and misuses is always there. Often, concerns of the weaknesses of the cloud overcome whatever bold strategies concocted and designed.
For those organizations in between, WAN acceleration/optimization techonolgy is another option. Companies like Riverbed, Silverpeak, F5 and Ipanema have addressed the ROBOs data strategy market well several years ago, but the demand for greater data consolidation and centralization, tighter and more effective data management and data control to meet the data compliance and data governance requirements, has grown much more sophisticated and advanced. Continue reading
