How infrastructure modernization is powering the enterprise today

Technology is the primary growth enabler for companies globally. According to McKinsey’s 2022 Technology Trends Outlook, the top global performers are leveraging advanced technologies such as advanced analytics and edge computing to break away from their peers - and by 2023, most businesses will need to build digital capabilities to stay economically viable.

So how can businesses accelerate their digital transformation? Modernizing their IT infrastructure is critical, and companies that can do this quickly will significantly outperform the competition.

The benefits of infrastructure modernization

Businesses looking to scale their operations require a solid and stable foundation on which to build, and a software-defined cloud-ready infrastructure ensures a solid footing. Here are a few benefits of IT infrastructure modernization:

• Improved performance: Digital modernization ensures that your teams can measure up to industry standards.
• Enhanced security: Legacy systems are full of security vulnerabilities, and modernizing your infrastructure allows you to eliminate these issues and ensure data privacy.
• Business agility: Moving to the cloud allows you to gain in-depth insights into your business’ strengths and weaknesses and pivot when required.
• Faster development: Modern IT infrastructure allows your teams to focus on new product development and not worry about crumbling infrastructure.
• Reliable operations: Updated IT infrastructure inspires confidence in your teams and ensures smooth business operations - no need to constantly be fixing glitches.
• Easy maintenance: Modern infrastructure provides your IT team with a single view of your entire environment, which allows them to proactively maintain your infrastructure.
• Cost-effectiveness: Cloud-driven infrastructure is flexible by design, easy to maintain and operate, enables faster product rollout, and reduces human capital.

Top trends in IT infrastructure modernization

Now that we understand the benefits of infrastructure modernization, let's have a look at the latest industry trends:

• Just-in-time infrastructure: A recent Gartner survey revealed that most businesses expect the technologies in deployment to reach adoption within six to 18 months. These shorter timelines require infrastructure to be ready in time to support new technology.
• Digital natives: The next few years will see the rise of digital-native companies who started their journey on the public clouds. Legacy brands – even in industries traditionally shy of using the cloud, such as insurance and healthcare – will have to innovate and catch up.
• Data proliferation: Data will continue to be important for businesses and will be collected in ever-increasing volume, variety, and velocity. It will now also be created and assessed at the edge. Companies must prioritize data retention and ensure that their infrastructure is robust enough to support its storage and access.
• A business-based mindset: Leaders must ensure that any innovations in infrastructure modernization are mapped to the needs and goals of their business. While businesses calculate the technical risks and rewards of selecting an infrastructure provider, they must also look at the business needs, such as deployment timeframe.
• Technology transformation: Technologies are changing rapidly, and businesses must prepare a team with multiple competencies and a high level of agility. They must work proactively to address skills gaps, or partner with external service providers who can provide a skilled workforce.

Critical aspects of infrastructure modernization

Once you understand the critical trends of application modernization, you should create a failsafe strategy by incorporating the following elements:

• Simplify architecture: Divide your monolithic architecture into multiple components so that each component can independently take care of one functionality. Use these components to create microservices that can be independently deployed using containers.
• Leverage microservices: Modernizing your infrastructure and applications allows you to decouple them with the help of microservices. Infrastructure-independent microservices remove your reliance on a particular vendor and enable you to switch between private, public, or hybrid clouds per your requirements.
• Move to the cloud: Migrating to the cloud can unlock new growth opportunities for your business and allow you to improve performance, enhance customer experience, and reduce costs.
• Right-size your environment: Businesses must define their modernization requirements and then look for an environment that meets their needs perfectly. They must check if the environment supports their cloud, Kubernetes, containers, and serverless requirements. The right-fit environment will help you optimize costs and reduce deployment time.
• Integrate DevSecOps: Deploying DevOps ensures that your application quickly reaches its audience through the continuous integration and continuous delivery process.

Using cloud infrastructure to reduce complexity

Many businesses, in their rush to modernize their infrastructure, introduce unnecessary complexity by not having a proper plan or standards before beginning their modernization journey. 

A recent Harvard Business Review study found that 85% of businesses use at least two cloud environments, and 21% use five or more. These businesses switched to the cloud to realize innovation, growth, and agility, but they’re now grappling with the growing complexity of multi-cloud operations and spiraling costs. 

Here are three steps to help your business minimize unnecessary complexity:

• Cloud assessments: Assess your infrastructure needs, security and compliance requirements, and future scaling opportunities. All this allows you to select a cloud platform that will meet present and future needs with the lowest cost and shortest deployment time.
• Cloud migration: Once you have a plan in place, you must execute your cloud migration by deploying your applications to your environment of choice. It’s important that your migration efforts don’t disrupt your everyday operations.
• Managed services: Post-deployment services include application and infrastructure management to ensure network monitoring, connectivity, virtualization, security, and disaster recovery.

At Zones, we can help in all of the above areas. We have a proven track record of helping businesses like yours to migrate to the cloud, modernize their infrastructure, streamline their operations, and minimize costs. We’ve worked our magic for countless clients over the years, and we would love to do the same for you next.

To explore this opportunity, connect with a Zones Account Manager today.

Learn more »