Of course you would. In a recent Forrester report on the economic impact of FlexPod, that is exactly the cost savings estimated by utilizing centralized automation and orchestration. So I ask, what new projects or services could your IT organization deliver with cost savings of$264,000? To get a copy of the Forrester report, go here.

This report details the impressive cost savings, not to mention a potential nine month ROI, available with FlexPod. But more importantly, this is the first time I have ever seen financial details or savings achieved with centralized automation, orchestration and management.

FlexPod has three certified solution partners. From my viewpoint the first to be certified, UCS Director (formerly Cisco Cloupia), provides the utmost in comprehensive management as well as the perfect complement for FlexPod. Watch this video to learn why UCS Director and FlexPod are the perfect one-two combination for your organization.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVuA1wnI5dk&feature=youtu.be

In this blog I would like to focus on two reasons why UCS Director should be your choice for managing FlexPod.

Comprehensive Management
UCS Director manages physical, virtual and bare metal environments from a single pane of glass. No purchasing of multiple product licenses that need to be cobbled together by a service engagement or dealing with component adaptors. UCS Director installs in less than two hours and can have you productive and provisioning simple infrastructure workflows in one day. Best of all, you can manage your entire IT infrastructure - not just the virtual infrastructure.

Native management
UCS Director natively manages all the components of FlexPod: Cisco UCS, Cisco Nexus and FAS storage. Why does native management matter? With native management your organization has access to all the functionality of each component layer because UCS Director speaks fluent Cisco UCS, Cisco Nexus and NetApp ONTAP and OnCommand. This is a significant advantage over solutions that only utilize "plug-ins" or adapters.

Solutions that utilize plug-ins, place the development responsibility of these solutions onto the hardware vendor. With already busy development schedules, vendors develop to the minimum viable feature set.

Best of all, UCS Director speaks fluent FlexPod 7-Mode, Cluster Mode ONTAP, and ExpressPod.

Forrester has lots of financial data in their report and the$264,000 is only an estimate that is worth your time understanding. Across the board industry analysts agree that seamless, automated orchestration and management is crucial for organizations to achieve the full experience of elastic infrastructure pools that become the foundation for as-a-service.

Cost savings of$264,000. Just imagine what your organization could do.

To obtain an evaluation copy of UCS Director, go here and choose free evaluation copy.