| |SEPTEMBER 20199in the form of DC evacuation, DC consolidation, DC expansion or DC extension.DC EvacuationThere are many scenarios where a company uses a third-party DC provider on lease. If the lease is expiring and the company does not want to renew it either for cost or service reasons, it can become a big dilemma to find another provider to migrate to or to establish its own on a stringent deadline. Moving to Cloud using one of the proven DC technologies and service providers can be a very attractive and an effective option.DC ConsolidationInfrastructure grows organically over time by integrating new technologies and new business requirements. Several loosely connected DCs on premises are the result. The costs, overhead and operational complexities also increase with a growing DC landscape. A DC consolidation exercise every few years is quite common in the industry and generally includes a major HW upgrade under a high stakes program. This can be an opportune time to consolidate the disparate DCs and their technologies into a consistent, flexible and agile DC on a Hybrid Cloud. DC ExpansionMost enterprises come to a fork several times in their IT infrastructure evolution in terms of refreshing and expanding their aging HW or converting the whole asset acquisition play into a service on demand. Expansion is an easier leap to make in which they retain their ownership of their existing on-premises infrastructure while they purchase additional growth on a public Cloud. The two sections of the environment remain separate with regard to their governance. Hence, there will be less perceived disruption to the existing modes of governance and hence, is a ready use case to launch into Hybrid Cloud.DC ExtensionWhile DC expansion is an easier choice to start with, there may come a time when the lack of ability to move workloads between the on-premises and Cloud will hamper IT efficiency and economics. There are proven technologies such as Layer 2 extension embedded into leading DC technologies that erase the boundaries between the two environments and make workload movement back and forth into a seamless exchange. However, there could be scenarios where existing workloads have been designed with location (e.g. IP Address) dependency and hence are required to be in a specific environment. In such cases, DC extension helps enterprises to retain the same identity (IP address) for their existing workloads even when they move to a public cloud. This is a very powerful capability that is otherwise very complex to achieve. I have come across a Pharma customer who not only moved their applications to Cloud, but, moved their legacy systems also to Cloud for a short while till migration is complete before their eventual EOL (End of Life).Another low-risk option for enterprises is to first move their Dev-Test environments to Hybrid Cloud, gain experience and then, address their Production environment later. There are even single host environments that one can start with before investing further. These require a relatively negligible investment.The Journey of the FutureHybrid Cloud as a concept has come of age and the technologies sup-porting it and the existing captive/on-premises environments are highly advanced. There are many enterprises around the world that have taken sure steps in this direc-tion as part of their digital transfor-mation. While the Hybrid Cloud technologies are advanced and proven, enterprises will still need to contemplate on the right way to begin their individual journey. They need to learn more about the opportunity, assess their specific environments deeply, convince themselves about what it can deliv-er, and choose the right use case as the launching pad for a long, pro-ductive and transformational jour-ney into Hybrid Cloud. B.S. Nagarajan
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