Deploying Cloud Computing Which data center hardware should be reserved

Today's enterprises have a lot to consider when designing their data center overall strategy. When deploying a data center design, the key is to adopt an holistic approach. The challenge for many CIOs and IT organizations today is to work with their partners to determine the best way to achieve it. First, how do you deal with existing infrastructure?

With the advent of virtualization technology, many enterprises have eliminated physical servers (although the investment in purchasing physical servers is huge), using virtualization technology. While many companies continue to virtualize in stages, it is known that this long-term virtualization not only brings cost savings to the enterprise, but also benefits from better performance, agility, and flexibility. The key is that virtualization is not just about saving money, but it brings more value to the overall IT environment and ultimately to the business.

Today, there are similar challenges in cloud computing. When companies take action to deploy cloud computing models in data centers and leverage external clouds, it's difficult to decide what to keep and what to eliminate, especially on physical infrastructure issues.

Indeed, reducing IT costs is the goal, but what about the investments already made? This involves old stories of “demolition and replacement” that have plagued many emerging technologies in the past. Should companies really consider phasing out their infrastructure? What is the fate of all these investments? Worse, what is the fate of the IT talents who manage them? This has always been the choice that IT is not willing to think about.

However, in the past few months, I have heard more and more CIOs and IT managers have turned to some internal solutions to adopt service solutions (whether it is a managed service or not) Reported by managed services). After interviewing a number of managers, things began to become clear. In the long run, the cost of maintaining and managing the old infrastructure and the human resources to do it is actually more expensive than phasing out the old infrastructure and adopting a more cost-effective deployment. The only challenge they face is to convince the CEO.

However, today's CEOs expect their CIOs and COOs to work together to make the necessary IT decisions to ensure the company's further growth. In several interviews, the IT manager pointed out that the numbers indicated the problem, so the CEO approved the elimination of a lot of internal infrastructure. Each case is different; in many cases, it is still difficult to make a decision. Finally, most infrastructure costs are a significant investment in the enterprise, and CEOs still expect to extract as much value as possible from the investment.

The challenge is whether you can decide this: What is the potential value of moving from an internal solution to an external solution? Does the cost of internal management and maintenance (including human/capital resources) exceed the cost of migrating internal infrastructure to the cloud? In most cases, especially for the old infrastructure, people will be surprised to see that it makes sense to make such a decision.

Interested in communicating your thoughts? Consider phasing out old infrastructure and moving to a more serviced model for you? Have you calculated the cost of maintaining your old infrastructure?