E X P E R T O P I N I O N

Deriving value from infrastructure relies on economies of scale , and the three contributing factors are cost , quality and speed .

When it comes to managed infrastructure services , automation is the only way to achieve success in all three aspects simultaneously . For largescale multi-cloud setups , infrastructure automation is the only way to meet changes in demand without a linear increase in costs and extreme cognitive load for application teams .

What if you could consolidate all your managed infrastructure tools into a single platform accessible via a control plane ? If the goal is to offer the ease of a hyperscaler experience even for legacy infrastructure services , what would that look like ?

Designing the future of managed infrastructure

Based on my experience helping global enterprises solve their infrastructure challenges , I have been thinking a great deal about this topic . If I had to design such a product from the ground up , my requirements would include :

• A single interface to create and manage infrastructure services across legacy and cloud

• Ensuring that services and infrastructure metadata is accurate and up-to-date

• The ability to access and manage services through a set of APIs

• A catalogue of infrastructure building blocks that enforce your policies

• Support for multi-cloud environments

• Automation by design

• A SaaS-like consumption model

Such an approach would constitute a true ‘ build your own cloud ’ service . It would make all infrastructure services transparent , with a single software control plane leveraging a set of APIs or GitOps methods . It could employ an app-store-like model to deploy infrastructure automation components – which are either available off-the-shelf or developed within the enterprise by citizen developers .

The product would manage infrastructure deployed with hyperscalers like Azure , Google , AWS and VMware , as well as legacy data centres . It would also take the human element out of capturing services and infrastructure metadata by making state

data an integral part of the automated process to reduce the risk of errors .

Above all , automation would be at the heart of the solution , finally bringing the convenience of hyperscaler to companies that must manage a mix of modern and legacy infrastructure . A managed infrastructure solution like this is what we ’ re calling an Enhanced Programmable Infrastructure Service – or EPIS . It ’ s a standardised , fully automated , software-driven foundation that controls what service and workload is being delivered , how it is configured and covers the complete lifecycle management of services and workload assets .

We believe it will enable enterprises to overcome complexity , streamline infrastructure management and deliver increased agility at lower cost . �

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