Companies across New Zealand looking to address the challenges involved in managing complex IT environments should consider a hybrid IT approach.
That’s according to ICT services company UXC Connect, claiming that hybrid IT approach lets organisations manage some IT resources in-house and use cloud-based services and third-party provides for others.
“While most businesses now use the cloud to some extent, few were actually ‘born in the cloud’,” says Glen Bernardino, Hybrid IT Business Manager for Data Centre and Cloud, UXC Connect.
“They tend to use a single technology platform such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).
“For the majority of companies, IT infrastructure includes a mixed workload, likely delivered by a combination of in-house resources and multiple service providers.”
According to Bernardino, this creates a “significant challenge” when it comes to managing complex IT environments.
“Even if these companies have adopted a cloud first or ‘as-a-Service’ strategy, simply buying compute and storage capacity is not going to be a quick fix to managing the entire IT structure of the company,” he adds.
As a result, Bernardino believes hybrid IT reflects the range of choices enterprises now have to operate their IT infrastructure, working for all organisations whether they want to use cloud extensively, or just for specific applications.
“To address the pressing business issue of managing the entire IT environment, organisations can use Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) with built-in services and expertise,” Bernardino explains.
“This combines the management and monitoring of the organisation’s entire infrastructure though a single provider.
“This significantly simplifies infrastructure management and lets the business free in-house resources for more productive, business-focused activities.”
Regardless of the preferred proportion of on-premises versus off-premises infrastructure, Bernardino believes organisations should consider four key issues when choosing the appropriate IT infrastructure:
1. Data sovereignty
When data is held offshore, it can be subject to different legislation and privacy concerns depending on where it is located.
To maintain data sovereignty, and to ensure that the data is protected according to Australian legislation, some organisations may prefer to keep the IT infrastructure within Australian-owned data centres.
Some types of data must not be stored offshore according to Australian regulations.