Choices that organizations make will saddle them
for years to come. Creating the right mix of
resources is crucial to putting your organization
on a path for success in the future.
GCP
Take a long look inside any large company’s IT infrastructure, and you will find a com-
plex, sometimes convoluted mix of resources, both physical and virtual. There is a public
cloud platform or two, likely a private cloud, plenty of on-premises servers and an
assorted assemblage of applications connected in various ways.
How did it get like this? Was every decision and every connection carefully planned out
– aligned perfectly to deliver a business service with laser-like precision? Chances are, it
was not. More often than not, decisions are made based on immediate needs that make
sense today but may not tomorrow.
ONTAINERS
WS
One of the primary decision drivers is cost. Everybody wants to be budget conscious. So
they choose platforms and pathways that save a little for a while, but might end up cost-
ing more in diminished productivity over time.
Another decision driver is data location. Companies need responsive applications, and
the distance between the apps and the data matters. When data gets separated from
applications, performance slows down, so organizations end up running their apps near
their data. But data is effectively unmovable. Once it is planted, it sets down roots like a
tree, so applications that need access to the data tend to be near the platform where the
data lives.
The facts are, IT setups grow in fits and starts, and platforms often get shoehorned in
odd ways. Yet the choices organizations make can saddle them for years to come. There-
fore, creating the right mix of resources is crucial to putting an organization on a path
for success in the future.
The Key Factors
Assembling the right mix comes down to three factors: asking the right questions; ana-
lyzing the impact of app and data placement; and maintaining consistency in the pro-
cess. And to set those factors in motion, you need two things: organizational buy-in and
the help of a good technology tool.
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