“Considering an infrastructure refresh as part of a data center consolidation, edge deployment, compute refresh or upgrade? Today’s decision making requires analysis, vision, and calibration and foresight so you’re ready for the next request from the business. For successful organizations and Business and Technical leaders, this requires a review of success factors for business, technical and compliance / risk goals.”
This is a five-part blog 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. In this first post, we’ll discuss the preparation phase.
In part one of this modernization series, we provided an overview for organizations looking to prioritize decisions in their datacenter modernization.
- During part two of the series, we will review how to identify and execute business goals related to infrastructure refresh. It's important that you have clearly defined business calls to build your technical use case and objectives.
- In part three of the series, we dug into technical goals that define how they support consistent operations, common management, reduce repetitive tasks, and create a flexible model for operating your technology assets.
- In part four of the series, we are reviewing the inputs into risk and compliance when making decisions around infrastructure modernization, data center refresh, and server replacement. We will review risk how to evaluate the frequency of security events, impact, and magnitude
- In part five of the series, we’ll explore how you can define value for your datacenter update refresh and modernization efforts. You’ll get targeted summary recommendations and tie those to use cases and data.
Get started with a Technology Refresh 3 Key Considerations:
For organizations preparing for any type of modern infrastructure refresh, these are the considerations to keep in mind:
- Business considerations. Refreshing infrastructure requires a review of migrating applications. Weighing if they belong in the cloud is an important business consideration; think about whether you need control over applications processing or latency. Many teams presume that test and development workloads are an appropriate starting point but may hesitate to place mission-critical workloads in cloud environments. Licensing considerations should also play a role, including existing databases, middleware, and application locations, and existing contractual models. Often teams should consult with procurement, accounting, and the legal when vetting out requirements.
- Technical considerations. In discussion with our customers, we hear that 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. A substantial portion of organizations find they rely on legacy technologies at the operating system layer, for which no equivalent exists in any major cloud environment. Technical considerations primarily relate to the specifics of database, integration, and storage construction. For example, when moving applications to a Public Cloud provider, a lack of persistent data certainly makes migration easier, as does a lack of reliance on non-relational database structures. Most customers start with evaluating their links with other applications is another gating factor.
- Security and compliance considerations. There are many potential tangible risks associated with moving to the cloud that is likely to strongly influence migration plans. Concerns about security and regulatory compliance are the most frequently highlighted concerns about the 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 the idea 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.
For example: security and regulatory compliance teams are likely to require a thorough security evaluation before they are comfortable proceeding with cloud migration.
Act: Work with VMware to launch your modernization efforts and make an impact with the next generation of modern infrastructure, hybrid, and multi-cloud
Next: Review your goals for business goals for modernization with part two of this series: considering the inputs that define business success for budget refresh cycle and measures for value.
Engage with us for a discussion about how to enable a modernization effort:
- See the 6 Reasons to Refresh to a Consistent Infrastructure Platform
- Start with the VMware Cloud Blog
- Look for content that matches your goals: Example “Business case.”
- Engage with the author to identify patterns in your business case.
- Join our chat on Slack
- Check out the VMware Technology Refresh Solution Brief for an overview of the solutions.
- Part:1 Modern Infrastructure Refresh Preparing for Cloud Capabilities in your datacenter and the edge.
- Part:2 Modern Infrastructure Define business success for budget refresh cycle and measures for value
- Part 3 Review your Technical requirements, migration pattern, and needs for capacity and availability.
- Part 4: Identify your risk Frequency, Magnitude, Primary and Secondary Loss.
- Part 5: Define Value across your technology refreshing using Business, Technical and Risk measures to identify successful value translation.