The IT Infrastructure Paradox of Choice
Today software is king and hardware is a commodity. There are lots of innovative products and solutions, in the IT infrastructure space alone, flooding the market today because of this. From private, public or hybrid clouds to big data solutions, to distributed storage solutions, all flash storage solutions, to converged or hyper-converged solutions and the list goes on. In my opinion, enterprise IT has too many choices, too many decisions and too little time to do what is really important for the business if they have to constantly keep up. IT professionals can barely learn and adopt a new thing before it becomes the old thing. This reminds me of “The Paradox of Choice - Why More Is Less” by American psychologist Barry Schwartz where in the book, Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers. Unfortunately the only one that’s going to eliminate the choices are you. I guarantee you vendors will keep flooding the market with product.
This means, it’s up to you to stay focused on todays requirements if you’re searching for a solution but don’t forget to keep a pulse on the future. If you’re in that refresh cycle or just need a solution for some new business requirements, take your time when making your choice. Don’t wait too long executing your decision though because by the time it’s implemented you may find a better solution present itself before you’ve even ripped the benefits of that newly implemented one. At that point you may want to put your blinders on and make the best use of what you’ve already started to deploy. The last thing you want is to have your data center cluttered with tons of mixed match infrastructure that don’t play well together, if at all, making it more of a burden to manage. You don’t need to completely keep up with the Joneses. Also realize that you’ll never find a solution that provides 100% of what you need.