| | February 20159CIOReviewThe complexities of inter-application dependencies, external interconnects and legacy requirements can undermine even the best laid plans"After a detailed review of our entire operation, we determined that relocating our facility was achievable in a reasonable timeline with existing internal personnel resources. As we were currently in a two data center configuration, the ability to utilize the second location as a pivot to swing functionality was critical to the plan.However the physical resources necessary to populate the new location with equipment represented a substantial investment in "Swing Gear". This pre-seeding of equipment in the new location gives the ability to stand up parallel locations with the minimum of risk and demonstrates the resiliency that regulatory agencies prefer to see.In our case this represented a major hurtle in the overall move strategy. The ability to pre-provision the new location to better facilitate the migration of applications and services while minimizing risks was essential. A detailed review of applications and hardware requirements gave us a consolidated picture of what was required. The review also gave us an opportunity to evaluate the deployment needs after optimizations were applied.This hurtle was overcome by applying optimizations to existing deployments, enabling application velocity and freeing up physical resources. This created opportunities to automate and secure as part of strategically re-allocating those physical resources between the existing alternate data center and the new location. This removed the necessity of a major purchase of "Swing Gear" to facilitate the relocation. That move alone saved over three quarters of a million dollars in hardware purchases, while maintaining the risk avoidance redundancy required in addition virtualization played a big role in our move.The final piece to this puzzle was the people. To be successful in any endeavor of this nature requires the best systems, networking, application and project management resources you can find. In my case I was fortunate enough to have individuals with the understanding and experience necessary to make this effort a huge success. It should not be overlooked that these resources weren't dedicated to the move. All of this was performed and completed by existing staff while maintaining the day to day operations of the company and completing new project work. Their dedication to supporting the company's needs is a credit to their professionalism and abilities.
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