Hyper-converged cloud platforms

#Hyperconvergence is the topic of the year in the datacentre - but how can it save you money? It's often the case that IT teams are over-stretched and under-budgeted: the business demands that they deliver on the technology industry's claims for agile and flexible IT infrastructures that allow the business to pivot quickly to meet market demands. Flexibility costs The price for this agility has, however, traditionally been large investments in infrastructure which can handle peak loads - a criterion which results in a large up-front cost to cover those peaks. The costs don't stop there. The three key datacentre systems - servers, storage and networking equipment - need separate specialist teams to manage them, adding not just cost but complexity. Essentially, too much time and effort is being expended on day-to-day activities, just keeping the lights on rather than adding real value. In additional, specialist systems such as mission-critical database servers, tuned and optimised for a single application, jostle for attention with the myriad of other devices in the datacentre, each of which requires configuration and management attention. Keep it simple The consequence of inflexible architectures and over-specialisation is a struggle to add value. Key to untangling the conundrum is a hyper-converged infrastructure, which can provide a fundamental building block for the enterprise cloud. So instead of three separate systems, a hyper-converged system includes all the components in a single, rack-ready box. The system is likely to present a hypervisor that can be loaded up with applications, with little or no configuration required.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/hyper-converged-cloud-platforms/