Modernizing your data centre and making sure it aligns with your digital transformation (DX) roadmap can be challenging. In 2018, Blair Technology Solutions commissioned a study with IDC to survey 100 Canadian IT and Business leaders on their IT modernization and DX journey. Our study found that the top three IT modernization challenges are: 1. Multiple, disparate data sources for analytics requiring complex integration and linking (55%); 2. Lack of visibility into existing IT assets and what they are supporting for on-premise infrastructure (40%); 3. Incomplete integration and interoperability between core systems of record, transaction processing and systems of engagement (39%). For more details on the IDC study, click here to listen to the webinar recording.
To overcome these challenges? By working through the following checklist, you can confirm that your infrastructure strategy is correctly tuned to your needs, avoiding potential cost overruns or capability shortfalls.
Align
Bring your team together. C-Suite, Line of Business and IT executives must align on DX and IT modernization objectives. Look at your current and future application requirements, especially around Big Data / Analytics and AI initiatives. Create a detailed inventory of servers across your entire IT infrastructure and identify all dependencies for major database platforms.
Assess
Assess all current systems and applications to determine what data, workloads and business process systems should be separated from legacy systems. Assess operational efficiencies and identify opportunities to improve service levels while decreasing exposure to security and compliance issues / problems. As you move to the cloud, ensure you have a strong strategy to determine which applications can be moved off-premises.
Prioritize
After the first two steps, you should have a good picture of when and where your application growth will take place. Prioritize what applications will be refactored, rehosted or retired. Choose the core platform that offers the most choice, flexibility, and fastest route to the cloud at the lowest cost.
Modernize
IT Modernization can’t happen overnight. Take an incremental approach and look for quicker wins to demonstrate the value of infrastructure modernization. For example, one of the first steps that many organizations have made in their DX journey is the adoption of cloud applications. As they move further down the DX road map, they adopt more open source and next generation applications for cost reduction and rapid innovation.
Digital transformation initiatives must be built on an infrastructure that is scalable, flexible and secure so you can effectively run your mission critical requirements alongside modern, data intensive workloads. Gain a competitive edge by selecting a trusted partner who understands modernizing legacy applications. Contact Blair today to find out how we can help you bridge the gap between IT Modernization and DX.
