One of the fundamental problems before today's enterprises is to embrace the hybrid computing environment. Several difficulties arise while integrating hybrid systems with stove-piped legacy applications. The right solution to address these problems is a hybrid IT integration framework.
Cloud computing is mission critical for organizations. It is the pivot around which digital transformation revolves. It is upending the ways in which enterprises are transacting business. However, the success with cloud computing is defined with integration. It is needed to seamlessly integrate cloud and on-premise technologies fragmented across the IT ecosystem in silos.
Cloud technologies have both strengths and weaknesses. Cloud-based technologies are configured of different design model and architecture than stove-piped applications. It is hard to combine a Software as a Service (SaaS) based platform like SalesForce with stove-piped applications.
Enterprises face dilemmas while navigating through complex verisimilitude of the hybrid computing environment. There are challenges around the cloud to ground integration which need to be tackled. Enterprises should rethink their IT strategy for harnessing a mix of cloud and on-premise technologies.
Strategic Planning for Enterprise Workloads
Enterprises should determine and classify workloads that need to be moved to the cloud. Understanding the business environment can help companies in improving their value chain. Enterprises can find out an appropriate service delivery model for their cloud migration use case. Identifying values and service-based requirements will help enterprises in assessing risks and finding out ways to tackle those risks.
There is no one size fits all concept when it comes to cloud deployment. Organizations should consider scalability and efficiency while investing in the cloud environments. The focus should be more on the seamless integration of services, reduced operational risk, and simplified management.
Enterprises should look out for ways to lower cost of processing and maintain data sovereignty. It should help in securing cloud and on-premise workloads with institutional knowledge and best practices. IT leaders should focus on the following issues:
· Risk profile: What are the risks associated with a service and triggers for securing it.
· Functional requirements: What are the regulatory and privacy needs, quality of service, security, latency, non-functional requirements, etc.
· Payload classification: How does a service map out to different cloud offerings e.g. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), etc.
· Investment lifecycle: What is the investment lifecycle and when it should be updated or refreshed?
· Roles and responsibilities: Are the roles and responsibilities defined?
· Dependencies: Are there dependencies on other services? Will change in one interface cause changes in other systems.
IT Governance to Beat Back IT Complexity
Strong IT governance is required to beat back IT complexities of hybrid computing. Organizations should consider infrastructure management for supporting people, processes, and technologies. This advantage helps in simplifying management and enabling quick provisioning of services.
Users can enable the firewall to ensure security, develop and implement security, prepare for cloud migration, and transition workloads in few clicks. Business users can take care of end-to-end data transformation needs and share documents with partners without any disruption.
IT governance provides a quick roadmap to accelerated time to revenue and better business outcomes.