The world is changing faster than ever before, and with this change comes opportunity and risk. Businesses need to adapt in order to survive and thrive in an increasingly volatile environment — one that’s characterized by digital transformation, cyber threats, geopolitical shifts, economic uncertainty, and more.
Time to Innovate
Modernization is a word used in many industries, but what does it mean for IT? IT infrastructure modernization is about improving your entire data center, not just replacing old servers with new ones. It includes improving security, implementing new technologies, reducing costs, and maximizing your data center’s efficiency. It’s a complex process, but it’s something you can’t afford to ignore or put off any longer. Your current infrastructure will eventually become obsolete, leaving you with a problem. It can be tough for businesses to invest in IT infrastructure modernization, but the truth is, it’s one of the best decisions you can make for your business. Doing so will help ensure that your business has the latest and most efficient technology, which can help improve operations and boost productivity.
Modernizing Infrastructure on the Fly
IT modernization is a bit like trying to put a new roof on your house while it’s raining. The ever-increasing complexity of infrastructure is the rain, and automation is the roofer that can help you get the job done quickly and efficiently. By using automation, you can overcome challenges such as security compliance, performance management, and operational efficiency. The result is a more stable and secure IT environment that can help your company stay on top of the changing times.
According to the recent Gartner Survey, 85% of Infrastructure and Operations Leaders without full automation expect to increase automation within three years.
Gartner predicts 70% of organizations to implement Infrastructure Automation by 2025.
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A successful Automation Strategy is key for IT modernization
Automation entails several benefits such as improved efficiency, reduced costs, business continuity, and better scalability. The more you automate your infrastructure, the fewer errors and inefficiencies you will have to solve in the future.
Automating Your Infrastructure for Better Application Delivery
Infrastructure teams must now work at the same pace as development teams to deliver application security services and policies that are required across a complex infrastructure, including data centers, cloud, and virtualized environments.
With the market’s high expectations of modern, reliable applications, many organizations face the challenge of finding a balance between faster development times and robust infrastructure. The truth is that infrastructure often lags behind, leaving Application and DevOps teams waiting for days or even weeks for the go-ahead from the infrastructure team. In today’s fast-paced world, this kind of delay is simply unacceptable. Not only does it jeopardize the reliability and security of applications, but it can also put the entire organization at risk.
How does automating and orchestrating all aspects of your infrastructure accelerate your modernization efforts? Automating infrastructure:
- Helps you manage and scale applications across disparate environments
- Delivers on-demand IT services and resources to accelerate business outcomes
- Provides self-service access to the application delivery process
A. Manage and scale applications across disparate environments, including hybrid cloud and multiple data centers
Organizations need to use a unified application management platform to manage and scale applications across disparate environments, including hybrid cloud and multi-cloud data centers. Such a platform provides automated deployment and delivery of applications. It enables businesses to manage and monitor all their workloads via a single platform, regardless of whether they are deployed internally or through public cloud services.
As a result, application, DevOps, NetOps, and SecOps teams can automate complex tasks such as delivering applications on demand with preconfigured infrastructure stacks and deploying them onto any environment within minutes, not hours. For example, they can monitor performance in real time, roll back failed deployments, and reuse existing service catalogs when creating new applications.
B. Deliver on-demand IT services and resources to accelerate business outcomes
For quicker business benefits, your IT infrastructure should be able to adapt to changing business needs and provide the right resources at the right time. In addition, it should be able to scale up or down as needed, providing on-demand IT services and resources so you can rapidly deliver new applications or support peak demand. Automation makes application delivery flexible, quick, and reliable – both technically and operationally. The infrastructure responsible for delivering the applications and technologies to your end-users becomes more secure and optimal.
C. Provide self-service access to an integrated application catalog
It’s also vital that your IT infrastructure is flexible enough to enable self-service access across all teams of the Application Delivery process – For example:
- DevOps teams looking to implement CI/CD application deployment strategies or
- NetOps teams who seek instant visibility into managed devices and applications or
- Application teams who can spin up specific load balancer configurations themselves in near real-time, using a self-service catalog portal or via API -instead of filing a ticket with the infrastructure team
By providing self-service access to the entire application delivery process, you can apply automation to discover and manage physical, virtual, and cloud-based infrastructure elements, from any vendor.
Automating your infrastructure is a surefire way to speed up software deployment and reduce costs. In other words, if you want to be at the top of your game in today’s business world, you need a robust and secure IT infrastructure that can support all the different components of your application delivery process—from initial development to deployment and maintenance.
In conclusion, I’ll leave you with two links that will give you a clearer picture of why you should automate and how you can get started.
To learn more, you can schedule a demo to see how AppViewX ADC+ can help you automate and orchestrate your application delivery.
About the Author
Haripriya Muralikrishnan
Senior Specialist – Technical Writer
Haripriya is a technical information developer and content strategist.
