For non-profit and charitable organisations every dollar spent on the back end is a dollar that can’t be invested in front line services. I’ve done quite a lot of work with charities and non-profit organisations in different parts of the world, including some in the USA, UK, Europe, and smaller charities in New Zealand and Australia. Cost and complexity of IT systems is always a constant challenge, especially when donations and grants can be unpredictable. So I was very excited when I heard Nutanix announce that we were going to run a program to provide a datacenter refresh to a deserving charity or non-profit organisation. I was even more excited to be invited to be one of the judges. This opportunity will allow the lucky organisation to get huge benefits from their IT while also allowing them to focus their investments where it does the most good. A complete transformation in 48 hours is really only made possible by the Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform and it’s unique web-scale architecture DNA.

Web Scale Converged Infrastructure changes everything. For the first time a business or organisation of any size can deploy a datacenter with enterprise features and high availability in as few as 4 rack units (compute, storage and networking), and with the ease of management of a consumer device, and in less than a day be up and running. This wouldn’t be possible without virtualization. Gone are the days when you need to have an overly complex multi-tier architecture to deliver enterprise grade availability and services, that takes weeks or months to get up and running. You can now start small and grow to any size, with the same predictable building block approach, and simplicity of management and operations.

Organisations don’t need highly specialist people to run this new infrastructure. The infrastructure becomes more invisible with built in automation so the focus can be on the applications and on delivering more value to the front line. I’ve seen countless examples of this already in just the short 12 months that I’ve been working at Nutanix.

Nutanix is a true innovator and disrupter of technology and we want to bring these benefits to as many people as possible. The benefits of a web-scale approach are staggering when compared to the old way of doing things that everyone is used to. I’m honoured to be invited to join Stuart Miniman, Douglas A Brown, Steve Greenberg, and Julian Wood on the panel of judges for Nutanix Web-Scale Wish. I look forward to helping transform the lucky winner’s environment. If you have a charity or non-profit organisation you’d like to nominate go to the Webscalewish.com website to register.

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This post first appeared on the Long White Virtual Clouds blog at longwhiteclouds.com. By Michael Webster +. Copyright © 2012 – 2014 – IT Solutions 2000 Ltd and Michael Webster +. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission.