Market Research

Organizational Imperatives for Converged Networks: Preparing for FCoE

Depending upon the size of the company and current organizational and reporting structures, converged networks may require changes in the budgeting process, change-management processes, management reporting structures, and chargeback systems.

"Consolidation and convergence are popular themes in budget-strapped, space-strapped, and power and cooling-strapped data centers. Organizations hope that converged IT infrastructure will deliver a permanent step-function reduction in the cost of IT services, avoid or delay the requirement to build new data centers, and enable the company to live within energy consumption and cooling constraints. However, whether an IT organization is considering server, storage, or network consolidation, the consolidation typically requires a significant upfront investment, and early adopters will pay a price premium. "In that regard, the converged network delivered by FCoE is no different. As a result, many companies will delay decisions for a year or more until they determine that the pricing of FCoE justifies the upfront investment. Others will delay until the technology is determined to be sufficiently mature and until clear leaders emerge, since, despite the efforts of standards committees, mixed-vendor environments will almost certainly be more difficult to support, monitor, and maintain. As companies wait for prices to decline and leaders to emerge, however, it is imperative that they prepare themselves organizationally for converged networks."