Today’s fast-paced business environment expects organizations to proactively modernize their data centers to keep up with the ever-evolving technological advances and efficiencies.  The adoption of digital platforms has become imperative for businesses looking to remain competitive and increase operational efficiency.  However, this transformation is not without its challenges, as many organizations struggle with how to best implement and integrate these new capabilities and platforms into their existing technical estate.  This article explores how organizations can modernize their data centers to prepare for the adoption of digital platforms, including the role of hybrid cloud adjacent infrastructure in simplifying and reducing complexity.

A Pragmatic Approach

The first step in modernizing your data center is to assess your current infrastructure.  Consider what systems and applications are in use, what the capacity and performance requirements are, and whether the existing technology is still sufficient. From there, you can begin to determine what changes need to be made to keep up with current and future demands including what systems, applications, and data sets could be prioritized to be modernized with cloud resources.

The second step typically looks at investments that must be made in upgrading and modernizing hardware that supports core systems of record.  In many cases, such capital investments are mitigated when considering cloud-adjacent infrastructure that sits in line with your cloud data path.   This modern infrastructure stack includes private, elastic resources including compute, storage, and network services that are higher performing, when compared with on-premises infrastructure, often requiring fewer resources to be dedicated to supporting existing / legacy systems.

Finally, identify what infrastructure and systems that are unable to move.   This may be attributed to a variety of factors including existing data center commitments, strict location-bound maintenance contracts, specialty infrastructure/interconnection, or other operational and financial considerations.   Generally, the latter in a smaller residual data center footprint.   This translates into lower operating costs and less complexity to the organization’s overall technical estate. 

Underpinning the modernization and extension of your organization’s technical estate to cloud adjacent and native services is security.  This goes beyond foundational measures such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and data encryption.  It’s increasingly vital to extend security capabilities to protect your customer experience of publicly accessible portals, applications, and websites.   Advanced cybersecurity measures including WAF (Web Application Firewall), Bot Managers, cloud security posture, and attack surface management are vital in maintaining customer trust as well as the integrity and availability of delivered services.  The Oncore Cloud Adjacent Platform seamlessly integrates with partner-enabled cybersecurity technologies delivering a comprehensive security overlay for your entire technical estate – Cloud Native, Adjacent, and on-premises.  

Hybrid Cloud Adjacent Infrastructure

To simplify and reduce the complexity of modernizing your data center, organizations can look to hybrid cloud adjacent infrastructure. This infrastructure is designed to allow organizations to integrate public cloud services easily and seamlessly with their existing on-premises data centers. A hybrid approach provides organizations with the best of both worlds, as they can take advantage of the scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of public cloud services, while still being able to leverage the control and security of their on-premises data centers.

One key advantage of hybrid cloud-adjacent infrastructure is that it provides organizations integration between interconnected digital platforms/services and cloud-adjacent infrastructure in line with the cloud data path.

The Oncore Cloud Adjacent Platform delivers managed infrastructure including:

• Full stack cloud and application security;
• Private storage, compute, data protection;
• Managed high-performance network and transit via UniversalEdge; and
• Workload/data migration services.

The Cloud Adjacent Platform allows organizations to easily move workloads between their on-premises data centers and the public cloud as needed, helping reduce costs and increasing operational agility and efficiency.

Modernizing your data center is critical for organizations looking to remain competitive and increase operational efficiency.  However, this transformation can be complex and challenging, particularly for organizations that are struggling with how to best integrate new technologies into their existing infrastructure. Hybrid cloud adjacent infrastructure can help to simplify and reduce this complexity, enabling organizations to easily and seamlessly integrate public cloud services with their on-premises data centers. By leveraging this hybrid approach, organizations can take advantage of the scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of public cloud services, while still maintaining control and security over their applications and data.

In conclusion, organizations must embrace data center modernization and digital platform adoption to remain competitive in today’s rapidly changing business landscape. By upgrading hardware, improving security, and implementing disaster recovery and business continuity planning, organizations can ensure that their data centers are secure, reliable, and capable of meeting current and future demands.

In addition, organizations can leverage hybrid cloud adjacent infrastructure to simplify and reduce the complexity of modernizing their data centers. This infrastructure enables organizations to integrate public cloud services easily and seamlessly with their on-premises data centers, providing them with the best of both worlds in terms of scalability, flexibility, control, and security; allowing for modernization and digital platform adoption at your organization’s pace.

It’s important to remember that data center modernization is not a one-time event, but rather a process requiring ongoing attention and investment. Organizations must stay abreast of the latest technological advancements and adjust their data center strategies accordingly to remain competitive and achieve their business goals.  At Oncore we specialize in modern technical outcomes and help organizations adopt, integrate, and scale their technical estate with public cloud resources.   Our Cloud Adjacent Method and Platform are the industry’s only integrated delivery stream that delivers accelerated, risk-reduced data center modernization outcomes.