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Buyers of hyperconverged integrated systems (HCIS) have been alerted to common myths that might affect their decision making.
According to Gartner, many new technology trends can lead to mistaken assumptions and hype that does not reflect the reality on offer.
This, it warned, can in turn influence buyer behaviour and lead to organisations coming to the wrong conclusions as to what system would work for them.
Gartner has therefore flagged up seven of the most common misconceptions that it believes leads to buyers making unsuitable purchases.
Firstly, Gartner said it is wrong to believe all implementations comprise standard and open architectures, as there are no software-defined standards, which means one vendor's management controls may not manage another vendor's devices or software-defined network.
The organisation also disputed the misconception that all implementations will fail mission-critical scalability and resiliency tests, as HCIS implementations will vary widely in robustness, scalability and security.
Infrastructure and operations leaders were also advised that HCIS costs do not necessarily represent the least-expensive deployment model, as long-term costs can potentially exceed the upfront investment.
Gartner went on to say the notion that the most important use case is virtual desktop infrastructure is another myth.
This, it stated, is because many general-purpose workloads are now a match for HCIS due to improved performance, scaling, data protection and ease of deployment, as well as an expanding hybrid cloud ecosystem.
A further common misconception is the idea HCIS means the demise of traditional storage arrays. Gartner stated that HCIS has "huge potential to replace small-to-midsize, general-purpose disk arrays in highly virtualised environments", but may be less effective in "in the case of large mission-critical applications that require predictable behaviour and proven reliability".
Gartner then sought to shatter the myth that HCIS eliminates data centre interoperability and silos, arguing it lacks tight integration with existing traditional infrastructures, which forces infrastructure and operations leaders to position them in silo deployments.
Finally, the organisation said it is wrong to believe traditional vendor selection preference will remain the same, as factors such as a vendor's willingness to drive innovation and its fluency in the new wave of HCIS would test many people's loyalty.
George Weiss, vice president and analyst at Gartner, commented: "HCIS, which encompasses software-centric architectures that integrate compute, storage and networking on commodity hardware, promises a cost-effective infrastructure solution that is simple to deploy, manage and scale.
"However, new and emerging technologies are often surrounded by hype as vendors try to accelerate sales.
Mr Weiss added that infrastructure and operations leaders, as well as other decision makers, should consider its advice carefully in order to avoid disappointment further down the line.
