Architect Your Infrastructure for Digital Transformation
Hybrid IT, Enterprise Bare Metal, Colocation in Business
With technology constantly changing, data volumes ever increasing, and consumer expectations at an all time high, having flexible infrastructure has become a critical business mandate.
As businesses strive to meet the demands of today’s consumers and adapt quickly to a changing digital landscape, many IT leaders are finding that the challenge of digital transformation—modernizing systems, connecting legacy applications with cloud technology, and managing corporate security and governance standards—is no walk in the park.
As a result of this multifaceted challenge, many IT decision makers are looking to new infrastructure solutions and subsequently realizing that on-premise and cloud solutions can complement one another. They are realizing that achieving digital transformation calls for a hybrid strategy that fuses the performance of dedicated infrastructure with the agility and scale of the cloud. As a result, hybrid IT is a unique approach that enables enterprises to transform while simultaneously emphasizing agility, security, and cost-effectiveness.
The agility you need
Several years ago, Forbes ran an article in which the author strongly advised businesses trying to navigate the chaotic cloud marketplace to prioritize agility within hybrid architectures because it would enable enterprises to quickly react to shifts in the business landscape.
That advice holds true today. With AI/ML workloads on the rise, and the exponential increase in data creation and consumption, IT infrastructure must be designed to handle elastic demand and accommodate high-bandwidth workloads.
And when placing workloads, it’s important to not conflate the speed and flexibility of the public cloud with the principles of digital transformation. Or, as Tech Target tells us: “Don’t assume your on-premises data center is for old, traditional workloads and the cloud is for new, transformational workloads.” Instead, hybrid solutions give enterprises the freedom to place workloads where they make the most sense. In that light, the cloud is not ideal for every workload, but can play a role in a winning digital strategy when used in concert with on-premise solutions.
Security for critical workloads
Although digital transformation should be a top priority for enterprises, security must not be pushed to the wayside in a rush to beat competitors to market with overhauled IT. Security fatigue is a real threat to businesses as employees become overwhelmed with the strain of managing multiple login credentials, pin numbers, and ever-changing security protocols. Adding distributed network infrastructure without careful consideration only adds to an organization’s vulnerabilities, putting them at risk of cyberattacks, loss of sensitive data, and reputational harm.
Instead, enterprises are looking to the colocation data center to help them connect with cloud resources while maintaining a high level of security and control. This approach allows IT teams to more tightly interconnect their private and public clouds, and complex digital ecosystems of applications, without losing control of their network security or user experience.
Avoid expensive inefficiencies
While decision-makers may wince at anything purporting to be “transformative,” immediately assuming it must involve heavy expenditure, digital transformation shouldn’t necessarily involve increased costs. In fact, as modern solutions are designed to leverage existing assets and investments, hybrid IT can actually save enterprises money.
The consolidation of assets enabled by hybridization plays well to the cost-conscious IT environment, as expensive inefficiencies are replaced with streamlined alternatives. When viewed as part of a wider digital transformation strategy, hybrid cloud is more than just a tech play, it’s pivotal to modernizing and achieving cost efficiencies.
Built for enterprise agility
The public Internet offers speed, agility, and unlimited scalability. It also comes with trade-offs in the form of limited control and security, and often higher costs for bandwidth. Recognizing this, many enterprises have adopted hybrid strategies, hosting sensitive or business critical systems on-premise rather than in the cloud. However, this approach to distributed architecture comes with its own complexities and added costs.
Cyxtera enables enterprises to reap the benefits of a hybrid strategy without many of the common downsides — slow networks, reduced performance, and high costs associated with multiple network connections. By providing direct connectivity to tier-1 networks and every major cloud provider in all our global data centers, Cyxtera cuts out the volatility of the public internet. By building on our platform, enterprises can reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and improve network performance and reliability.
Our software-defined platform offers the speed, scale, and agility you demand (and deserve). Reach out to learn more about our distributed hybrid IT offerings.
Views and opinions expressed in our blog posts are those of the employees who made them and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Company. A reader should not unduly rely on any statements made therein.
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