Overcoming the roadblocks to successful infrastructure modernisation

Every CIO is aware that today their IT infrastructure underpins the success of the company. Scalable, integrated compute, network and data platforms are the prerequisites for delivering exceptional experiences to customers and employees.

The challenge now? For IT to design a modern, cloud-first infrastructure that is integrated, secure, and software-driven, while keeping the organization’s existing business processes “on”.

Why businesses are turning to cloud-first

Businesses that have successfully implemented a modernized cloud infrastructure are now reaping the benefits across the human, physical, and digital domains of the workplace. A modern infrastructure frees employees from the cumbersome limitations of legacy platforms and allows them to focus on continuous, rapid innovation, automation, and optimization.

It’s no longer enough to simply keep up with the competition; CEOs want to use digital technology to stay ahead of their peers by delivering frictionless omnichannel services and intelligent business processes that can quickly adapt to changing conditions.

Obstacles to cloud-first transformation

As more organizations adopt a cloud-first strategy, You’ll encounter a series of roadblocksand the two most common in APAC seem to be legacy technology and IT staff with outdated skills.

Embedded in legacy infrastructures, including data centers with long leases and applications never designed for the cloud, can be found too expensive to modernize.

Reskilling existing employees originally hired for expertise in data centers, mainframes and traditional networks is often impractical while at the same time keeping the lights on.

Finding new talent isn’t necessarily an easy answer either. With talent shortages in Asia Pacific, many organizations struggle to attract and retain cloud-savvy team members.

Recognizing the challenges of your company

Every company has a different starting point and challenges to overcome when beginning their cloud migration, comments Duncan Eadie, Cloud, Infrastructure & Engineering Lead at Accenture Asia Pacific and Africa.

“Forward-thinking IT departments need to become an end-to-end service provider, not just a technology component provider, and that requires full-stack engineering,” he says.

“How does an organization come up with this? It really depends on the starting point, which is different for each company depending on their individual problems – whether it’s talent gaps, complex legacy assets, custom software, licensing issues, or large CapEx investments in mainframes or data centers,” he continues. “Each organization must define its own barriers and then chart its own path to innovation and value.”

Three key pillars to focus on

Accenture’s Duncan Eadie recommends that companies focus on driving standardization and consistency across three main pillars:

1. Cloud Native Technology: Build a strategy that, where practical, uses similar technology (eg, containers) across the cloud environment to simplify management.
2. Ensure infrastructure can be deployed anywhere: The business will increasingly expect apps that run faster, are more personalized and available whenever and wherever the business needs them. Consider consumption/subscription-based services that can be quickly scaled up or down to match business needs.
3. Autonomous Operations: Most importantly, as the IT environment becomes more diverse, the organization cannot afford to manage each cloud separately. Work towards a single cloud control panel for more consistent scaling, security, and governance

The stabilization-optimization-transformation methodology

According to Duncan Eadie, Accenture regularly helps clients build a cloud-first IT infrastructure strategy with a methodology that systematically breaks down the internal barriers of any organization.

A stabilized environment is one that functions without continuous fire drills for critical systems. It introduces automation to increase quality, reduce costs, and lays the foundation for a multi-speed operating model that can support a hybrid landscape.

On the other hand, an optimized environment gets the maximum performance out of IT assets and people to drive the business forward. It frees up funds and time to create a clear path to full-stack innovation.

“The changing environment really comes into play when the company is ready to focus on tomorrow. We take the stabilized and optimized environment that forms the foundation and then extend the footprint into the cloud continuum, leveraging more advanced capabilities to enable more innovation,” he says.

According to Eadie, the timing of each step can be flexible and non-linear. For example, a company might recognize the benefits of stability and optimization today, and then initiate transformation at a later date of its choosing. Or it could build a whole new innovation environment that goes live quickly, and then gradually migrate stabilized and optimized legacy applications to this model over time.

“The journey path depends on the key business needs, priorities and the values ​​they are trying to achieve,” concludes Eadie.

Learn more about optimizing your infrastructure for the cloud.