Modern Infrastructure Refresh Preparing for Cloud Capabilities in your Datacenter & Edge.

“Considering an infrastructure refresh in Datacenter Consolidation, Edge Deployment, Compute refresh and consolidation? Today’s decision making requires analysis, vision, and calibration and foresight for the next request from the business. For successful organizations and leaders this requires review of success factors for Business, Technical and Compliance / Risk goals.”

This is a 4 part series for organizations considering a refresh of compute infrastructure, moving or migrating to the cloud or application consolidation. VMware takes these inputs into consideration with our operating model for premise and cloud. See the considerations below.

Business considerations. Refreshing infrastructure requires review of migrating applications, weighing if they belong in the cloud is an important business consideration such as control over applications processing or latency.  Many teams presume that test & development workloads are an appropriate starting point but may hesitate to place mission-critical workloads in cloud environments. Licensing considerations play a role, such as database, middleware, and application location and contractual model.

Technical considerations. In discussion with our customers one of the most urgent technical considerations is the use of modern technology and infrastructure in application construction. For operations teams this focus is often on the portability and adaptability of the application and its operating environment used. A large portion of organizations find they rely on legacy technologies at the operating system layer for which no equivalent exists in any major cloud environment. Primarily considerations relate to specifics of database, integration, and storage construction. For example, a lack of persistent data certainly makes the decision easier, as does lack of reliance on non relational database structures. The need to establish substantial links with other applications is another gating factor.

Security and compliance considerations. There are many potential risks associated with moving to the cloud that are tangible risk and are likely to strongly influence migration plans. Concerns about security and regulatory compliance are the most frequently highlighted concerns about cloud. These concerns are likely to result in a lot of objections but are also susceptible to rapid shifts in perception. As an example, many customers point out that a cloud provider must have security that is inherently better than their own internal security is not enough; Organizations need significant education to underscore this point. Yet, paradoxically, security and regulatory compliance teams are likely to require a thorough security evaluation before they are comfortable proceeding.

Next: In article 2 of 4 lets explore your Business goals with this series. “Business Goals: consider the inputs for your future ready cloud & hybrid operating model.”