The introduction of technologies such as solid state storage, artificial intelligence and machine learning, software-defined infrastructure and public cloud is done with digitally-led business goals front of mind, but such changes can make IT infrastructure management infinitely more complex. 

As organisations move forward with their digital transformation initiatives, they look to undergo IT modernisation. But when this includes a host of new technologies, the IT infrastructure starts to resemble something of a spider’s web.

Evolving cloud and on-premise models often change where workloads, applications and data reside. In one recent IDG research report, approximately 85% of ITDMs said they were in a hybrid multi-cloud state, working with an average of over five cloud solutions. In a separate IDG report, 86% of ITDMs said that cloud is very important to leveraging enterprise data,. Cloud was clearly preferred (by 65% of respondents) to on-premise environments for ensuring data protection, especially for larger firms with more established cloud environments.

By 2025, 49% of data will be stored in public cloud environments, according to separate research by IDC. At the same time, we are seeing the reinvention of on-premise data centres. From composable to hyperconvergence and All-Flash storage, the modern data centre looks to reduce complexity and increase scalability for better business performance and speed.

Organisations want the security of on-premise, but with ‘cloud-like’ speed, performance, cost control and as-a-service finances and operations. For many, this balancing act results in a hybrid cloud infrastructure that combines the best of on-premise (governance, compliance and security) with the best of cloud, such as speed and scale.

Meanwhile, organisations want to deliver platforms which support a ‘develop once and deploy anywhere’ strategy for their software developers. This often means enabling developers to work with microservices, container platforms and virtualised environments. They need to be able to move apps and data around an IT estate that might include public cloud, on-premise or hybrid.

All this change can result in complexity, from cloud and application sprawl to issues over data governance, compliance and security. Then there are concerns over cost and the talent shortage – teams are simply being spread too thin to deliver on business objectives. Indeed, Gartner believes that 70% of IT infrastructure teams will be unable to support the business by 2025.

The infrastructure you have today won’t support the needs of business tomorrow. Infrastructure is everywhere….IT must be faster, leaner and a lot smarter and less costly.

David Cappuccio, a research vice-president at Gartner

In this podcast episode, we look at what an IT infrastructure should look like for a data pacesetter/intelligent enterprise, the emergence of hybrid cloud and reinvention of on-premise, and what these changing infrastructure landscapes mean for CIOs, IT teams and developers – all of whom want an agile and solid IT infrastructure. We ask the key question: how do CIOs and business leaders build an agile, secure and automated IT infrastructure to enable a more intelligent, digital business?