The Digital Advantage

The evolution of IT infrastructure and the impact on Irish businesses by Jason Walsh

It’s no exaggeration to say that in today’s always-on digital world, data is at the centre of business operations, but many businesses find it difficult to choose a strategy to meet the organisation’s data needs. Buyers seeking to meet growing computer and storage demands are met by a wide range of options, each with competing goals and cost structure.

The modern data centre can cut through the noise, working in tandem with existing on-premises systems, including supporting legacy IT refreshes, and interconnecting to cloud compute assets. This approach allows businesses to unlock value with flexible, converged infrastructure giving the ability to develop and deploy applications without the drag factor of slow and complex provisioning or vendor lock-in.

Faced with the challenge of meeting their organisational IT needs and growing customer expectations, businesses have in recent years typically considered two different paths to success: expanding their in-house IT by growing their on-premises IT stack or moving key parts of the business to the public cloud.

Both strategies have advantages and disadvantages. While an on-premises IT stack promises control, it can lack in scalability and also demand excessive capital expenditure. For the public cloud, it requires little up-front investment, but data policies are often opaque and operational costs can be high.

A third option exists, and increasingly it is the option of choice for businesses around the world. This is a hybrid approach, with data residing in private cloud within colocation environments. This includes moving on-premises systems, along with interconnections into co-location where it is deemed appropriate either on a cost or compliance basis. Colocation is the foundation on which forward-looking businesses build their data strategy.

It is clear that with the growing reliance on technology to drive business, not least in terms of meeting customers where they are, that businesses and other large organisations need to modernise their IT infrastructure. However, simply moving from legacy on-premises systems to public cloud is rarely an appropriate solution either in terms of compliance or cost control.

Organisations know that they need to get more from their IT, but with little desire to increase spending on complex internal systems, the cloud is no longer viewed as a viable one-size-fits-all solution. The problem may seem at first glance to be insoluble. Luckily, this is not at all the case.

Today, Irish businesses are faced with the demand for digital transformation and find themselves not only with a challenge ahead but also with a great opportunity to take advantage of world-class infrastructure.

Connected, scalable and flexible, colocation has served the IT needs of major multinationals and is the ideal starting point. Hybrid cloud strategies take the strain out of running an on-premises data centre while also allowing for full control over sensitive enterprise data.

Help your business and IT decision-makers to focus on choosing a strategy to meet their organisation’s data needs. Read Jason Walsh’s full Digital Advantage paper on the Interxion website: https://www.interxion.com/ie/whitepapers/the-digital-advantage