’Tis a gift to be simple, as the old song has it, and it’s one that would be most welcome in many modern data centers. Simplicity is the essence of speed, and speed is what organizations need to survive and thrive in today’s hectic and disruption-prone business environments.

IT leaders are looking for solutions that are quick to deploy and straightforward to manage. At first glance, infrastructure-as-a-service seems an attractive option. It effectively accelerates some IT operations by outsourcing them.

But not every application or workload is right for public cloud. Most organizations have some applications and data – social security numbers, credit card information, for instance – that they would prefer to keep on-premises, for security, compliance and accountability reasons. The anticipated speed gains from cloud don’t always materialize, given the need for cloud apps to run in web browsers via Internet connections.

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