Category: Solutions

Things move quickly in the business world, particularly when it comes to technology. Strategically adopting emerging solutions can help an organization differentiate itself within the marketplace and provide the best experience possible, both internally for its staff members and within customer-facing systems.

However, as new solutions continue to roll out and gain buzz in the enterprise and tech industries, it’s important that decision-makers are aware of the top trends, as well as how these might potentially impact their infrastructure. Not having the right expertise or infrastructure support in place could cause a trending tech initiative to fail internally, or lack the ability to provide the type of ROI business leaders were hoping for. Considering the possible benefits alongside the potential infrastructure impacts of tech trends ahead of time is imperative ahead of implementing anything new.

Let’s take a look at some of the top trending technology solutions and approaches that will make waves in 2019, and how you can best prepare your infrastructure to support these types of emerging systems.

Connected clouds: ‘Multicloud’

While, in some cases, the cloud has been a part of enterprise infrastructure for years now, Forbes and CMO Network contributor Daniel Newman noted that next year, the lines will keep blurring between different cloud services. What’s been known as a hybrid cloud architecture will develop even further, and include connected public and private cloud environments to create a more multicloud configuration.

“Basically, what’s happening is that companies are realizing that going all public cloud, private cloud, or data center isn’t the best option,” Newman wrote. “Sometimes they need a mix of all or both. Thus, connected clouds are continuing to develop to meet companies’ changing needs – whether they want to cloud-source storage, networking, security, or app deployment.”

In this way, chances are good that businesses across nearly every industry sector will continue to move increasingly critical workloads to cloud environments. This will require robust partnerships between companies and their cloud providers, as well as robust expertise on the part of cloud vendors to ensure that rising cloud investments do provide value and benefits for the organization. In addition, it’s always important to have the proper visibility into capacity management and data protection, particularly within cloud environments.

Data abounds: Analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning

In recent years, data has become a commodity and enterprises have been quick to capitalize on and analyze the sources they have on-hand. This trend will further develop next year as initiatives that center around data analysis continue to be a priority. This includes artificial intelligence and machine learning, particularly as additional use cases emerge.

In many cases, even organizations that are already participating in analytics and exploring AI and ML are only on the cusp of realizing the true value and advantages that data can provide, particularly for decision-making and overall strategy. There is considerable room for maturity within these initiatives, which we’ll continue to see in 2019 and beyond.

However, as with any type of data-driven initiative, storing and processing large volumes of information requires considerable infrastructure support, which must be coupled with the right capacity planning and performance management. IT teams must ensure that they have the necessary resources to enable these types of demanding activities.

What’s more, having the right data protection in place is imperative, especially as more regulatory standards require increased safeguarding of individuals’ sensitive details.

Privacy: A top priority

As more workloads are moved to the cloud, and businesses place a high priority on data and analysis, incorporating security and privacy must go hand-in-hand. As IT Toolbox contributor Neil Miller pointed out, 2018 became the year of data privacy with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation going into effect in May. Concerns surrounding data privacy won’t slow heading into 2019, and ensuring that the right safeguards and associated policies are in place will only become more important, and potentially more difficult.

In this way, it can be a great benefit for organizations to partner with an expert technology service provider that can support needs for cloud computing and consulting, as well as data protection and storage management. In addition, pairing this partnership with an infrastructure performance solution that can enable in-depth visibility across the entire infrastructure can be especially beneficial. To find out more, connect with The ATS Group today.

A lot can happen in a year, especially when it comes to a business’s technology. Just consider your own internal infrastructure: Chances are good that the previous 12 months have seen at least one major initiative, be it the deployment of a new application or the migration of certain workloads to the cloud.

What’s more, as technology continues to advance and companies increasingly look to leverage more advanced solutions, their internal IT landscape will continue to change and adjust. According to a recent survey, experts are forecasting modest increases in business IT spending through next year, ZDNet reported.

Now consider that you have the power to look back at all the upgrades, usage patterns and other trends that took place within your infrastructure over the past year: What kind of insights could this information tell you?

Peak usage periods

One of the first elements that many IT teams analyze about their historical data are readily identifiable peak usage periods. While this kind of insight is often considered a low-hanging fruit, one can learn a lot about overall IT health by taking a look at periods of top usage.

For instance, although many companies expect usage peaks toward the end of the year, and especially during the holiday season, administrators may also find that usage increases in the early spring as well. In this way, IT stakeholders can ensure that adequate support is in place during these peak usage periods to prevent bottlenecks, slow performance and other issues.

What could a historical look at your infrastructure tell you?

How capacity was used

Stakeholders can also examine historical infrastructure data to get a sense of how their overall capacity was utilized in the past year, including the initiatives to which capacity was devoted and how those resources were put to work. This can provide cues for future initiatives, as IT admins can look back to see how much capacity was required for a similar project in the past, and better ensure the right resources are in place for upcoming initiatives.

The success – or snags – of migrations

It’s clear the the cloud isn’t going anywhere. In fact, organizations will only continue to consolidate workloads within internal data centers and migrate additional items to cloud environments. As enterprises increasingly work toward a multi-cloud strategy, being able to view, in-depth, the steps that were taken during past migrations can be invaluable to informing upcoming migrations.

Supporting future decision-making with historical infrastructure data

Being able to view, analyze and leverage a year’s worth of historical data, driven by an industry-leading infrastructure management solution like Galileo Performance Explorer, is critical in the current IT landscape.

“IT administrators can achieve a holistic view of their entire infrastructure, and use … analytics to make decisions related to compute, storage and network resources to avoid problems before they result in downtime or slower performance,” Dell EMC noted. “They can also use predictive analytics to understand resource utilization and when it may be time to upgrade portions of the infrastructure.”

To find out more about what you can glean from 12 months of historical infrastructure data – or even from a 30-day snapshot – connect with the experts at Galileo Performance Explorer today.

Data center migrations have been taking place more frequently over the past few years. Given the demands for reduced on-premise infrastructure, lower operating costs and boosted reliance on the cloud, this infrastructure exodus makes perfect sense.

That said, just because it’s an increasingly common occurrence doesn’t mean it’s a straightforward proposition. In fact, the upheaval that comes from handing off critical assets during a migration represents potential weak spots that can leave a business vulnerable.

Data center migrations: Success comes with a plan

As ServerCentral pointed out, over 60 percent of companies have delayed their migrations due to concerns about downtime, a lack of necessary resources and expertise. In addition, of those that delayed their migration, 20 percent noted that they did so because they did not have a plan in place to support the process.

Thankfully, a successful migration doesn’t have to be as complex or challenging as IT admins and business leaders might expect. With the right planning and best practices, organizations can better navigate their data center migration, and ensure they have the insights about their existing and new infrastructure environments to avoid downtime and support top-notch performance of key IT assets.

Planning and the proper performance insight can support a successful data center migration.

6 steps to successfully navigating a data center migration

Let’s take a look at the critical steps to include in your data center migration plan, and how infrastructure performance monitoring enables a more streamlined migration process:

1. Establish the scope of the migration: The first key step in any migration is identifying the scope of the project, including the workloads and applications that will be part of the transfer. While some initiatives will encompass the entirety of the applications and infrastructure supported by the data center, others may only bring in a few key apps and data sets.
2. Monitor the data center infrastructure: This is where infrastructure performance monitoring and visibility comes into play. Admins should monitor the infrastructure and elements scoped out in the migration scope to get a full picture of usage patterns, key trends and other demand spikes that must be accounted for within the new infrastructure. Galileo Performance Explorer enables users to take a 30-day snapshot of their infrastructure, or to leverage historical data for as long as Galileo has been in place.
3. Group assets to be migrated: Building upon the initially determined scope, stakeholders should look to virtually group together all the assets that will be migrated from the data center. Galileo enables users to utilize a Tag Manager function to easily identify and group servers and storage systems included in the migration.
4. Determine baseline support and bandwidth requirements: Using an innovative infrastructure performance monitoring suite like Galileo, stakeholders should analyze metrics including IOPS, latency and throughput to glean an understanding of the support and bandwidth requirements that assets will require. This helps prevent downtime and other performance issues as items are moved from the data center to the new infrastructure environment.
5. Leverage metrics to right-size the new environment: Based on trending and usage spikes noted during baseline analysis, stakeholders can ensure that the new infrastructure will have the necessary resources and support to enable performance.
6. Monitoring during and after migration: A solution like Galileo allows users to monitor critical assets during and after the migration to support the most in-depth visibility and a streamlined migration process.

Migrations will continue to be an essential initiative for enterprises, but they must be supported with the right planning and infrastructure performance insights. To find out more, connect with the experts at the ATS Group today.