| | July 20178CIOReviewThe magnitude at which IT's footprint and complexity has grown over the past years has CIOs and IT leaders questioning their data center strategy and approach. While emerging technologies promise increased agility and responsiveness, the proliferation of applications often results in a convoluted portfolio of assets which only intensifies the complexity of IT environments and data centers.Today, most enterprises have heterogeneous IT footprints with both on and off-premise assets, which can be difficult to manage since there is no "single pane of glass" that provides visibility into the performance of all assets. Today there are multiple alternatives to host applications on and off-premise, but the right approach isn't evident. While the trend is to host applications off-premise, 78 percent of IT leaders believe that some aspects of their application resources will remain on-premise for the foreseeable future. At the same time, IT leaders want to transform the data center to enable more nimble operations and increased innovation. A hybrid of on and off-premise model with a cloud management platform which enables orchestration and management of services would enable organizations to become more agile and responsive today. What are the key next steps to achieve this model?Step 1: Define which portion of the data center remains on-premise and which portion is housed in the cloud. Below are three ways to categorize business applications to determine the optimal data center for the business:1. On-Premise: Major regulatory and compliance applications (e.g., to enable HIPPA and SOX compliance) with a clear focus on high availability and operational efficiency should continue to run on-premise with highly virtualized clustered instances which can be upgraded in-line and have built in Disaster Recovery capabilities. Ethernet and IP Fabric for on-premise data centers provide the capabilities to deliver a zero down time infrastructure while enabling in-line upgrades. While cloud-based solutions exist, if privacy, security, and regulatory risks Data Center of the FutureBy Ari Bose, CIO, BrocadeCXO INSIGHTSIn My Opinion
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