For many companies, the IT infrastructure of old — designed to handle closed and highly controlled business environments — is a quickly fading memory. These days, companies large and small are clamoring for robust and dynamic IT solutions that are capable of handling increasingly sophisticated business environments.
According to a recent IDC report, 34 percent of organizations are already making use of hybrid IT systems, with sectors like government and transportation furthest along in adopting the hybrid cloud. Although hybrid IT offers plenty of excellent benefits, it requires IT employees to learn new skills to harness it in the most effective way possible.
How Hybrid IT Benefits Businesses
According to Dan Jablonski, Director of Cloud and IT Solutions Product Management at Verizon, the flexibility, scalability, and agility offered by a hybrid IT system is what’s making it an attractive option to many businesses. As Jablonski notes, the cloud already makes it faster and simpler for businesses to add additional resources in immediate response to customer demand. However, the ability to create a genuinely unified infrastructure — tying together public and private cloud resources with legacy systems and colocation — is what truly makes hybrid IT a game-changer for businesses.
The robustness of the IT infrastructure depends heavily on the IT department’s ability to respond to ever-changing challenges. Although many IT employees understand the importance of managing data across multiple clouds, only a fraction believe that they are succeeding in their current efforts. Areas of concern among IT departments include application performance, data protection, and governance.
Strong training, along with equally strong risk management and analytical skills, plays a critical role in guiding IT employees as they transition away from the static IT infrastructure and into the more fluid hybrid IT environment.
The Importance of Network Providers
A key ingredient of any successful hybrid IT and cloud strategy is a reliable and proven network provider. Using the latest in network technologies, service providers can play a critical role in creating and managing hybrid IT infrastructure. For example, software-defined networking (SDN) gives businesses the ability to view the entire network, route traffic in near-real time, and facilitate changes in capacity and service provisioning as needed.
Partnering with a seasoned network provider to implement advanced hybrid systems makes perfect sense, especially as IT infrastructure becomes more fluid and dynamic in nature. To learn more about how our hybrid IT solutions can help your company, contact us at eXemplify today to set up a no-obligation consultation.