IT infrastructure is now used by a variety of organizations to manage their IT environments. According to Gartner, global IT spending is expected to increase by 9% in 2021, but determining the best method of optimizing this infrastructure for better use, preventing service disruption, and cost savings is a challenge for many of these organizations.
Having a strong infrastructure optimization plan in place is critical; it will aid project delivery, risk reduction, and service disruption prevention, among other things. According to Flexera, among other cloud computing initiatives, European companies rank optimizing cloud infrastructure as 59% important.
What issues may arise?
What impact does your existing IT infrastructure have on your company's ability to expand and succeed in its market? Without cloud technology, you're wasting money on unnecessary IT infrastructure upgrades and maintenance. The following are a few advantages of making the switch:
1. Make the Most of Your Earnings
You may increase income by eliminating silos with an improved IT architecture and making your technology more efficient. Many advantages come with moving your IT infrastructure to the cloud, such as improved data management, simplified procedures, and compatibility across applications and systems. It's a fantastic chance for small companies to reduce expenses while still providing high-quality services, which will help them get more customers in the long term.
2. Become more Agile
Using virtualized infrastructure tools or cloud-based infrastructure tools may help a company manage its data more effectively and efficiently in the long term. Together, they make your computer environment more complicated, resulting in slower performance. EWeek writer Chris Preimesberger says that in order to optimize, companies must have complete visibility into their surroundings. This means that IT infrastructure must be as transparent as possible. A comprehensive perspective of IT equipment makes it simpler for IT administrators to exercise business agility.
3. Improve Your Network’s Strength
You may improve the efficiency of your data center by investing in networking solutions. This is a critical step in completing jobs faster and balancing workloads. According to TechTarget, network function virtualization, for example, may reduce the quantity of network gear required and therefore lower the overall complexity. This has a positive impact on company operations and, as a result, results.
4. Cut Down on Downtime
According to Acronis' study, 42% of businesses suffered data loss events that caused downtime in 2019. While almost 90% back up the IT components they are responsible for safeguarding, just 41% back up regularly, leaving many companies with critical data gaps.
In the event of a breakdown, outage, or downtime, your IT infrastructure may be compromised, resulting in lost revenue and operational ramifications for your company. Due to the inefficient on-premise infrastructure architecture that causes more damage than good to your revenue, many companies are very vulnerable to these issues. It may be less expensive, less disruptive, and easier to maintain systems if you go to the cloud.
Where to Start?
The trajectory is set by the goal. In other words, determine why you want to improve your IT environment and then decide which of these three methods of optimizing Information technology infrastructures best fits your needs.
On-Premise Infrastructure Optimization
Optimization On-premise infrastructure necessitates a reduction in the number of machines in the data center. Many organizations are implementing this optimization strategy in order to get rid of systems that are no longer in use and keep only the necessary and operational ones.
However, implementing this strategy may result in a loss of system performance because it may necessitate the use of less powerful processors or low-capacity memory. According to Synergy Research Group, business spending on data center hardware has decreased by 9%, indicating that the organization's expenditure on on-premise infrastructure has decreased.
This optimization method is risky because it requires you to reduce the number of your systems, processors, or computer memory, which may result in a loss of profit if your organization's resource demand increases after the reduction.
As a result, it is recommended that you ensure that the degree to which you are reducing your system, processor, or memory capacity is capable of handling the workload if there is an increase in demand.
Cloud Infrastructure Optimization
Cloud infrastructure is being widely adopted these days, and it is predicted that by 2026, the money spent on cloud services will account for more than 45% of the total IT expenditure for enterprises.
Optimizing Cloud infrastructure demands allocating the appropriate resources to the workload or application in order to achieve optimal performance while also reducing waste.
Because each application has a unique set of resource requirements that can change, allocating cloud resources to these applications is critical. Using this strategy, you will be able to allocate sufficient resources to only the workloads or applications that require them at a given time.
This cloud optimization method enables you to enable cloud infrastructure to be operational at the desired time, avoiding the payment of the amount that would have been paid if the cloud infrastructure had been left running for many days.
Migration from On-premise to Cloud Optimization
Many businesses have considered moving some or all of their resources from on-premise to the cloud in order to save money. Many organizations do this on a regular basis in order to have more on-premise infrastructure while also ensuring the availability and security of their resources. According to reports, 70% of all cloud initiatives in Europe are focused on migrating data and applications to the cloud.
As per Gartner’s publication, the cloud service industry will grow by 17% between 2018 and 2019, with a 22% increase expected by 2022.
Also, in the Enterprise Strategy Group's research, the number of companies attracted to the hybrid-cloud strategy has increased from 81% in 2017 to 93% in 2019, demonstrating that many of them are interested in this cloud infrastructure.
This will also provide flexibility and a reasonable level of responsibility, as the cloud provider will assist in the protection of your resources and will constantly monitor them.
How to Go about Optimizing Your IT Infrastructure
So, how can you optimize your IT infrastructure? Audit, planning, and implementation are the three steps required in the optimization process. Let's go over the specifics of these stages:
Audit
It is at this stage that you determine the main reason for optimizing your company's IT infrastructure, visualize the consequences, and assess the performance of your resources after the optimization process.
Now, let’s go into the details of cloud and on-premise infrastructure auditing:
- On-premise infrastructure auditing
This entails knowing the number of available computer systems or machines in your firm, as well as the available processors and memory capacity, and determining the total number of these resources required by the firm to function properly.
- Cloud infrastructure auditing
Understanding the available and required cloud resources is essential for cloud auditing. A thorough audit of your available infrastructure necessitates the presence of a strong team of DevOp professionals in the case of cloud and administration if your data is hosted on-premise. Following the auditing, the derived result will provide you with knowledge of the required infrastructure optimization, and the planning stage will follow.
Planning
The second step in IT infrastructure optimization is planning, which is where the organization decides how to carry out the process after auditing to determine which infrastructures require optimization. The auditing recommendations are used in the planning stage to determine how the optimization will be carried out.
- On-premise optimization planning
Planning on-premise infrastructure optimization simply entails deciding how to go about reducing the number of computer systems, their processors, or memory capacity while ensuring that the organization's proper functioning is not jeopardized.
- Cloud Infrastructure optimization planning
You must have detailed insights into the optimization process, including how to optimize in such a way that it will benefit the company, reduce costs and risks, and improve performance, as well as finalize how to carry out the process to achieve these desired results. Following the creation of a practical plan, the company will proceed to the implementation stage.
Implementation
After planning the optimization, the enterprise moves on to the implementation stage. At this stage, the optimization approach is actually applied to the IT infrastructure. This is done in accordance with the plans that have been established.
- On-premise infrastructure optimization implementation
Reduce the number of systems in an enterprise to implement an on-premise optimization strategy. This may call for a decrease in the system's processor or memory capacity. However, this must be done in such a way that it does not interfere with the organization's proper functioning.
- Implementation of cloud infrastructure optimization
Re-hosting: Also known as 'lift and shift,' re-hosting means simply migrating existing data and applications to a new cloud server. Because it is so simple, this method is best suited for beginners with little or no knowledge of cloud environments that necessitate code modification.
Re-platforming: In re-platforming, you migrate your existing data and make architectural changes to it so that it will work in the new cloud environment. Because it requires changing some codes, this method is not suitable for beginners.
Retaining: This method implies that the organization does not migrate the data and applications and instead leaves them in place.
Repurchasing: It means that the organization opts out of the existing cloud environment licensing and purchases another cloud environment. It is also referred to as a drop-and-shop.
Modernizing: This entails breaking down existing applications and rebuilding them in such a way that they have improved performance and are less expensive. This is not for beginners because it necessitates a high level of coding knowledge.
Rewriting: The method sees the rewriting of an organization's entire application and data in order to properly optimize performance and cost.
What Issues Arise during Optimization?
While these bottlenecks may appear during an IT structural upgrade, it is important to note that each company has its own unique approach to dealing with them. As a result, we'd only list what they are.
- The cost of scaling may be prohibitively expensive.
- Difficulties selecting security assessment processes due to continuous iterations.
- Difficulties in tracking the usage/capacity of your old tools
Conclusion
Optimization is essential for an organization that wants to experience improved performance in its IT infrastructure and also wants to reduce costs. This article takes you through the entirety of how to optimize your infrastructure, making them at a reduced cost.