Ultima Blog

The Foundations of Intelligent Infrastructure in Manufacturing

Written by Matthew Beale | 09-Nov-2019 19:03:07

An intelligent manufacturer is digital, automated and highly efficient. It out-performs its competitors by out-innovating them. And it’s built on intelligent infrastructure from the foundations up. So what is intelligent infrastructure and why do you need it?

Why you need intelligent infrastructure

If you’re like most of Ultima’s manufacturing clients, you’re already on your way to becoming a more automated, intelligent business.

You’ve probably already invested in digital technology in the supply chain and on the factory floor. Perhaps you’re already automatically monitoring and analysing the performance of your production equipment so you can schedule proactive maintenance.

These are some of the technologies that get the limelight in manufacturing, because they help your company drive efficiency, competitiveness and innovation.

But in my experience, automation in the factory and supply chain needs to be matched by intelligence in the server room and data centre. And I’m not talking about applications – they’re smart enough already – I’m talking about the intelligent infrastructure they run on.

Without intelligence right down to the physical foundations of the IT stack, your company’s best-laid plans for world-class digital manufacturing could crumble.

What is intelligent infrastructure?

Intelligent infrastructure is the most secure and energy-efficient equipment available, overlaid with intelligent services that together give you better operational efficiency and strategic agility.

At Ultima, we think in terms of two main classes of intelligent infrastructure: intelligent servers and storage, and intelligent operational management.

Intelligent servers and storage are secure, energy-efficient devices combined with a cloud-based, AI analytics engine. This constantly monitors the infrastructure, analyses performance, predicts issues, recommends continuous improvements, and carries out pre-emptive remediation automatically to avoid incidents.

Intelligent operational management adds a layer of artificial intelligence to traditional performance monitoring tools, making more accurate diagnoses and timely remediations. It allows you to identify and resolve more issues automatically, reducing the mean time to repair, and paying for itself in reduced downtime and better application performance.

Intelligent infrastructure like this is the critical success factor in enabling your company’s strategy for digital manufacturing. And what’s more, it frees-up your time, releasing you from mundane operational management so you can apply your skills to more interesting and strategic work.

How to make your infrastructure more intelligent

Ultima can help you design intelligent processes, automate them across the whole manufacturing ecosystem, and provide the intelligent infrastructure and managed services to operate them.

Among the many solutions we have at our disposal are HPE’s ProLiant servers, which come with AI-powered cloud-based analytics and self-management as standard. It’s worth noting these servers are on special offer at the moment.

The AIOps system behind this equipment, HPE’s InfoSight, can anticipate and resolve 86% of problems automatically and cut the time IT teams spend managing problems by 85%.

Ultima can help you improve availability, performance and user experience, cut the time you spend monitoring and maintaining equipment, and free you to help drive the business faster towards its digital manufacturing goals.

Give us a call on 0333 015 8000 or send us a message so we can talk about laying the foundations of intelligent infrastructure for your business. 

 

 

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The Foundations of Intelligent Manufacturing

The Foundations of Intelligent Business

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