In today’s data-driven business landscape, knowledge is power. Companies that use business intelligence and analytics tools more effectively than their competitors are best poised to succeed in the months and years ahead. Thankfully, there is an IT strategy to support the modern analytics-driven business. It outlines how to optimize deployment of analytics ready infrastructure. For example, analytics tools can identify “high-value” customers for the business to focus on. These tools can also identify products with poor performance that should be improved or eliminated.
Unfortunately, far too many organizations are still using legacy systems and software incapable of working with the large quantities of data that need to be processed. This problem becomes a double whammy as data grows. IDC predicts that the total amount of data in the “digital universe” will grow to nearly 50 zettabytes (50 trillion gigabytes) by 2020. It’s estimated to more than triple by 2025, growing to 180 zettabytes.
In order to combat these difficulties, IT needs a strategy to update aging infrastructure. The solutions should be able to democratize analytics across your entire organization. The goal should enable not only experts, but also “citizen data scientists” to complete powerful and insightful projects.
One of the most popular business intelligence platforms is Microsoft SQL Server. The latest version of SQL Server includes more features to support analytics capabilities. Of course, SQL Server must also be paired with a high-performance servers that can handle the elevated levels of demand on processing and memory. Ideally, these servers should support the latest technologies for analytics, such as hyper-convergence and non-volatile dual in-line memory module (NVDIMM).
Companies that upgrade to the latest version of SQL Server must answer one important question: Do we deploy the new version on new servers, or make it fit with its existing infrastructure instead? For most, using new hardware will be the right choice. Why? Trying to upgrade existing servers is a time-consuming and difficult task. The process creates frustrations among your employees and takes up effort that could be spent elsewhere. In addition, the presence of other unexpected workloads running on the server can cause your initial capacity estimates to be incorrect. When this happens, you may be forced to start over from square one – which wastes time and effort.
Using new servers allows your IT team to install and test SQL Server before it’s put into production. This mitigates any adverse effects to your existing workloads. Using existing infrastructure requires a good deal of guesswork. On the other hand, pre-configured and pre-tested servers such as Dell’s Ready Solutions come with known levels of performance and capability. Think about how much valuable time and effort you could save.
The new Dell PowerEdge servers are perfectly suited for the performance demands of modern analytics platforms. For example, we tested SQL Server 2016 on the PowerEdge R730 and the newest R740. The R740 delivers a blistering 41% improvement in transactions per second and cuts average query response time in half.[1]
Dell provides PowerEdge servers to run your business. We also offer a suite of services to support these servers throughout their lifecycle, from consulting to installation and deployment to support and maintenance. Dell assists companies that seek to digitally transform their operations, making it easier to process the ever-growing quantities of data and mine them for critical business insights.
To read more about the IT strategy to support the modern analytics-driven business, download the Tech Target white paper.
To learn more about Dell PowerEdge servers, visit dellemc.com/servers
[1] Based on a Dell Engineering study using the TPC-E benchmark to test Microsoft SQL Server 2016, August 2017. Actual performance will vary.
