“Think outside the box” has been the mantra for a decade or more. But could management gurus have it wrong? If recent developments are anything to go by, it may be that thinking inside the box is the better option, at least when it comes to IT--that is, combining IT infrastructure into one simple box.

Examples of this abound. The security market was an early adopter of this trend with appliances that bundled firewalls, spyware, virus scanning, and other features into one plug-and-play machine. More recently, boxed products have appeared that consolidate telecom with communication functions, as well as what is characterized as a “data center in a box.”

“The phrase ‘in a box’ is a popular one when describing preintegrated bundles of hardware, software, and services that purport to be simply installed, turned on, and used,” says Jonathan Eunice, principal IT adviser at analyst firm Illuminata (www.illuminata.com). “We’ve heard ‘cluster in a box,’ ‘retail store in a box,’ ‘bank office in a box,’ and now ‘data center in a box.’”

Benefits To “In A Box” Technology

What are the advantages? Abdul Kasim, vice president of marketing and business development at Critical Links (www.critical-links.com), says that single-box products eliminate the need to have multiple solutions from different vendors. “It makes sense to offer SMEs an integrated platform,” says Kasim. “Otherwise, you’d face the complexity of interoperability, different upgrade schedules, and developing expertise in multiple systems.”

Critical Links’ edgeBOX combines functionality such as VoIP, routers, storage, wireless access, and collaboration tools. The whole point is to dramatically simplify the telco/IT. Other single-box solutions in the communications space include AT&T’s Business in a Box (www.att.com) and Siemens HiPath OpenOffice ME Appliance (www.siemens.com). As well as making management easier, such tools are easy to implement.

“Depending on the complexity of the environment, implementation can be done in less than five hours,” notes Shayna Kaneshiro, global portfolio manager at Siemens.

Another advantage is patch management. With one box to look after, the vendor takes care of updates and ensures everything plays well together.

Data Center In A Box

Another big trend is the truly enormous box. Portable data centers include Verari’s new FOREST (www.verari.com), Rackable Systems’ ICE Cube (www.rackable.com), and Sun Microsystems’ Sun Modular Data-center S20, aka Project Blackbox (www.sun.com).

“Arranging and connecting increasingly large collections of bundled racks is now a headache,” says Eunice. “Products like Blackbox can just be installed; hooked up to power, cooling, and networks; and turned on.”

They come in container-sized packages for ease of shipping. Sun’s version contains eight 19-inch racks. Each rack can take up to 25kW of capacity.

“We looked at what would be the biggest chunk of computing we could build that could be organized in repeatable modules and would remain cost-effective,” says Maurice Cloutier, senior product manager of Project Blackbox for Sun. “It is aimed at customers who are running out of space, need to minimize their investment, ease the pain of building new data centers, add a DR [disaster recovery] site quickly, or lower power consumption.”

Depending on the vendor, these units have different power and cooling schemes. With some, you have to figure out your own power and cooling. Others come with water feeds for cooling and built-in redundant power panels.

Eunice believes modular computing on this scale is the future of IT. He sees a wealth of uses for the “data center in a box” concept. A container, for example, could be stored in a warehouse and quickly transported to the disaster site. Military organizations, too, might airlift them in to support remote operations. An SME might bring one in during a phase of rapid expansion.

All Your Eggs In One Box

The popularity of such “in a box” concepts seems to indicate that many SMEs prefer preintegrated packages. The growing popularity of SaaS is another facet of the same overall trend. The economics of running your own hardware and software, particularly when you have to integrate everything, often doesn’t make it worth the effort in many cases.

But that doesn’t mean boxes are for everyone. Illuminata’s Eunice notes that modularity might not make it the most efficient configuration for every user.

Critical Links’ Kasim warns that some “in a box” packages could pose a disaster recovery hazard. “The downside is that by combining all these increasingly important business functions in one unit, businesses may worry that they are putting all their eggs in one basket,” he notes. “What do they do if that basket breaks?”

To address such concerns, the single-box vendors are adding features such as full disaster recovery protection, rapid recovery, and comprehensive security. Critical Links, for instance, created a fault-tolerant architecture. If there is a problem with the unit or connectivity with the service provider, there is built-in redundancy to eliminate the possibility of failure and ensure business continuity.

As SMEs become convinced of the safety of their data and the long-term viability of boxed approaches, however, it seems likely that this trend will gain further momentum.

“A single box approach removes the trade-off between costs, capability, and complexity,” says Kasim. “SMEs can reduce their initial investment by over 60% and have all the functionality they want.”

by Drew Robb

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