As digital transformation gains momentum, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are battling to stay ahead. To keep up, they are constantly looking for new, innovative ways to increase performance, improve time to market, and gain efficiencies. Similarly, irrespective of the size or industry a business operates in, the ability to store and access data is crucial to the success of its operations. However, if the business is an SMB, it more than likely doesn’t have the IT team or budget to build and manage an infrastructure solution that can handle all its data requirements.
There is a range of critical software and applications that SMBs need to run their businesses. After all, most of these entities deal with a minimum of email, payroll, and project management solutions, and need solutions that can not only properly store all their files and data, but has enough power and memory to support their evolving needs. This means that on-premise servers remain a key element of business operations for many SMBs, particularly as going the ‘pure cloud’ route isn’t always suitable for these entities, due to Internet or bandwidth constraints, or simply because they prefer to own and house this critical technology.
Add to this that by 2025 the global data-sphere will soar to 163 ZB, driven by the IoT, the growth of mobile, social, big data, AI and more, and to embrace these trends and fully harness the benefits to fuel better business outcomes, SMBs need the right technology in place. However, IT is currently being tasked with managing intensive workloads, ramping up data storage and security, upgrading legacy systems, and accommodating the technology demands of today’s distributed workforces. With SMBs’ limited budgets and lean staff, the gap between escalating business demands for fast, value-added services and IT’s ability to supply it continues to grow.
There are also several key challenges that SMBs face today. Firstly, this burgeoning volume of data, which needs to be taken in, correlated, and analysed in real-time to provide an overarching view of business processes, to gain the insights needed to improve efficiencies, drive superior customer service, and inform smarter decision-making. In reality, most SMBs simply lack the capabilities to respond to data overload and shifting customer expectations. The closer to source that this data is processed, the more efficient it is.
This is because they find themselves hampered by several obstacles, such as legacy systems which prevent them from fully embracing digital transformation. When a business has antiquated servers, productivity takes a significant hit. Also, not enough computing and storage performance can delay simple reporting, not to mention sophisticated analyses. The majority of SMBs simply don’t have the resources to manage legacy IT. What they need, is simple, automated, high-performing IT that can run their critical workloads more efficiently, lessen system administration, and free up resources for more strategic activities.
SMBs also understand the need to boost security, as being a small company no longer guarantees that threat actors won’t have you in their cross hairs. In fact, SMBs are particularly vulnerable, as they don’t have the sophisticated tools and solutions that the larger enterprises can afford. In fact, budget constraints on the whole are an issue for many SMBs. These smaller entities still have to navigate evolving compliance regulations, increase network security, and ensure 24x7 availability, but without the massive budgets their enterprise counterparts enjoy, and with less in-house skills. This is why the prospect of modernising their existing IT environment is such a compelling one because it can also lower operating costs.
For many SMBs, the clear solution lies in modernising IT infrastructures, particularly servers, to make them easier to manage and more secure, regardless of whether critical applications and data are hosted on-premise or in the cloud. These smaller entities need server platforms that not only meet their current needs but are able to scale up to seamlessly handle the workloads of the future, and do this while bringing costs down too.
But although SMEs know they need reliable servers that run around the clock, they often find it difficult to know where to start. Smaller entities don’t have massive IT teams with the skills and expertise to pinpoint what server or technology is going to be the best for them. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution when it comes to compute solutions for SMEs and investing in the wrong piece of equipment could result in poor performance, unsecured data, inability to scale, inability to access data, and wasted effort. Moreover, ongoing innovation from vendors, makes it even more challenging for SMBs to ensure they buy the best solution for their needs.
In addition, because SMBs need an infrastructure solution that is built for their unique needs, there is a misconception that it needs to be a server built in-house. But when you consider limited budgets and a lack of in-house skills, SMBs simply don’t have the time to take on such a complex and arduous task.
This is where working with a partner like Tarsus Distribution can be of tremendous benefit, as they take the pressure off businesses when it comes to making the right choice, and they provide the necessary support and expertise to sure implementation is smooth, and that ongoing maintenance is hassle free. Tarsus, for example, works with its partners and customers from start to finish to ensure an optimal, high-performing, and reliable on-premises server solution. It does this by first unpacking what the customer is looking for, such as the types of applications or services they are running, as well as their data demands, and then finding the ideal solution to meet those needs.
Fortunately, new innovations in server technology from HPE make it possible for SMBs to leverage the performance and efficiencies that in the past, only the largest corporates could afford. Step in the HPE ProLiant Gen10 range of small business servers, powered by Intel Xeon Scalable processors, which deliver greater agility, security, and economic control with the world’s most secure industry-standard servers.
HPE ProLiant servers empower SMBs to unlock the full potential of infrastructure modernisation, while also accelerating business insights across today’s hybrid world made up of traditional IT and public and private clouds. With all the technology packed into this solution, SMBs may think that it would come at the expense of incredible technical complexity, but this isn’t the case. The benefits are numerous.
Firstly, increased agility, as HPE servers make it easy to adapt IT to evolving needs with Intelligent System Tuning and advances in server networking and storage. In addition, application performance is improved, reducing traditional storage hardware bottlenecks such as write latency, and are perfect for speeding up databases and analytics workloads. In terms of security, HPE’s ProLiant range has unique security features to protect SMB’s digital assets, right down to the silicon.
In addition, HPE’s Secure Compute Lifecycle offers unparalleled innovations in firmware protection, malware detection, as well as firmware recovery, and the company’s new Silicon Root of Trust technology designs security directly into the iLO 5 chip, creating an immutable fingerprint in the silicon which prevents servers from booting up unless the firmware and fingerprint match up.
When it comes to affordability HPE ProLiant servers offer a unique blend of enterprise-class capabilities at a very attractive price tag, offering outstanding configuration flexibility to meet even the most complex business requirements at an exceptionally low cost.
With hundreds of applications to choose from, HPE and Tarsus can help SMBs to build the right IT infrastructure for their needs. The ProLiant range has the power to support the latest high-performance workloads, such as engineering or technical applications, demanding business applications, virtualisation, structured data management and analytics, as well as high-scale cloud, collaboration, and storage - all possible bases are covered. It also features a flexible chassis design that can adapt to diverse physical environments, delivering the right expandability for changing business needs, making it the perfect choice for growing SMBs.
Save money by modernising your IT infrastructure to meet your unique business needs. Contact us today to find out how.