Within just two decades, the expectation of what technology can deliver to end users in terms of agility, speed and innovation has dramatically changed. Businesses must now constantly revisit their IT strategies in order to keep pace with an age of digital transformation driven by applications and data.
This has meant going beyond the traditional datacentre and public cloud to form and manage a hybrid connected system stretching from the edge to the cloud, wherever that may be.
But how can you manage an edge-to-cloud hybrid environment? Here’s some essential things to consider when rethinking your approach to the next wave of IT disruption.
Proactive cloud strategy
Along with balancing performance and cost, a more proactive cloud strategy can also help businesses meet the specific needs of applications and workloads. One example is unifying access to essential services company-wide, as this means staff won’t need training to manage multiple clouds in multiple ways.
Remove complexity
Not only do hybrid IT environments need to be simple to deploy and manage, they must also be capable of optimising multiple workloads across traditional enterprise as well as private and public cloud infrastructure. This calls for a hybrid cloud management platform that doesn’t require detailed knowledge of the underlying hardware.
Automation traditional platforms
Don’t be fooled into thinking that traditional IT environments will continue to serve your organisation’s best interests. Look to modernise your server and storage platforms with greater automation, which can lead to hyperconvergence and composability.
Deploy everything as a service
To fully optimise your use of resource, deliver everything as a service. Cloud has become a key delivery mechanism and consumption model for almost all services.
Future-proof for emerging tech
Hybrid IT has got to be future proof for the fast-growing alternatives to today’s most popular cloud options, which include but are not limited to bare-metal and container platforms, as well as extensions to the architecture, such as the distributed edge.
Gain insights from data
If you can provide access to data across all forms of infrastructure without silos, line-of-business users will benefit from greater value and more analytical capabilities. However, a lot depends on where the data is generated and how it is best analysed, especially as edge computing gains momentum.
Know what you’re getting Even though cloud providers have adopted more flexible pricing options in recent years, this has only added to the complexity of adoption. Know what you’re getting with things like pay-as-you-go and build-transfer-operate approaches.
