The IT world is being told repeatedly to digitally transform or die. Countless examples are cited of industries where the early adopters of technology rose to dominance and the laggards perished. Think Google at the expense of Yahoo. Netflix over Blockbuster. Uber over a complacent taxi industry.
There is great truth in the necessity to evolve, innovate and move with the times. Technology, after all, is being integrated into every part of modern business. ERP and CRM systems from ten or more years ago are often so badly out of date that they may be losing the organization a fortune. Aging infrastructure that inhibits performance aggravates staff and can lead to the establishment of a shadow IT where departments and even individuals run cloud services independently of IT control.
Building the Right Foundation
Building a house without a foundation is folly. Setting up a skyscraper on swampy ground is a disaster waiting to happen. And attempting digital transformation on a creaky or aging infrastructure is a sure way to add years and vast cost to strategic IT initiatives.
Digital transformation, therefore, cannot be done by simply buying the latest software or sending everything haphazardly to the cloud. It requires modern, well-designed, executed, and managed infrastructure. But there are a great many factors to consider and barriers to overcome to take your existing infrastructure tech to where it needs to be to achieve your digital transformation goals.
Our recent paper, Top 7 Ways to Make the Most of the Hybrid Cloud, lays out the five key areas that stand in the way of modernization and what to do about them. It covers problems such as spiraling cloud costs, compliance and privacy challenges, rampant cloud insecurity and complexity. Today’s organizations harness many different cloud services from different providers on a variety of platforms that are dispersed across the globe. Faced with such complexity and geographical dispersal, no wonder so many find it so hard to digitally transform.
Modernize as you Transform
Forward-thinking enterprises cannot avoid the complexity of hybrid cloud environments if they are to offer their customers the services they need with the level of performance they demand. A strong, performant and resilient hybrid cloud is the only way to provide the sales, marketing, analytics, supply chain integration, production systems, and customer support applications that are integral to modern business operations.
But how do you get there? The first step is careful planning based on a sound assessment of the enterprise and its existing cloud and on-premises assets. Digging into your own environment to unearth the answers to key questions is the first step toward simplifying your cloud operations, reducing your time to value for new technology investments and establishing an infrastructural foundation on which you can digitally transform.
Download the paper, Top 5 Ways to Make the Most of the Hybrid Cloud, and then let’s start a conversation to assess your environment and how you can make the most of the hybrid cloud.
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