UNCOVERING THE LAYERS
Ian Jansen Van Rensburg , Senior Systems Engineer and Lead Technologist at VMware Africa
can create operational cloud silos and compliance risks .
Bringing multiple clouds
IT therefore needs to find ways to offer services seamlessly and securely across private and public clouds . To keep pace with escalating business demands , businesses require an agile , service-oriented IT model for data
centres that leverages both private and public clouds . Not too long ago , highly dynamic , available and programmatic compute , storage , network and security services could give businesses an edge over competitors .
Today , these capabilities are simply table stakes in a challenging landscape . Companies understand that they need to move forward rapidly on their journey towards a software-defined environment or risk being left behind . To drive business innovation and growth , IT teams need to connect applications across clouds and devices with security , compliance and availability and a consistent architecture . And this must all happen within the constraints of a limited budget .
To do this , it requires building a data centre that is virtualised , softwaredefined and automated while providing a consistent operational model for infrastructure and application delivery . The advantages of such a data centre are undoubtedly compelling . Unfortunately , many companies are saddled with complex , heterogeneous infrastructures that are difficult to manage , especially when IT resources are limited .
Legacy environments are often inefficient and lack automation , employing siloed IT groups that rely on manual processes for configuring and provisioning policies and infrastructure resources . Modern application support is an issue as well , as most infrastructure platforms are not designed for both traditional and modern applications while working with existing hardware and software investments .
This is where service providers come in , that enable businesses to seize the momentum and modernise their data centres to meet growing business demands . With innovation and modern software , IT will steadily evolve towards a modernised Software-Defined Data Centre ( SDDC ) to provide infrastructure , applications , data and IT services rapidly and on demand . This requires companies to be able to choose from a variety of infrastructure options , from open APIs to native container apps – all on the infrastructure they trust .
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