Ever-ready IT infrastructure

Ever-ready infrastructure needs a solid and stable footing on which to build. That’s true whether your goal is unlocking business value and innovation for today or preparing the organization for the Cloud Continuum tomorrow. Either way, enterprises need to evolve away from a capital intensive, hardware-oriented infrastructure discipline to one that is software-defined and intelligent.

Accenture uses a stabilize-optimize-transform approach to modernizing infrastructure that also helps companies save on costs. The best part? The timing of each step is flexible. So a business can enjoy the benefits of stability and optimization today—then kickstart a transformation at the time of its choosing.

Here are some key considerations for companies looking to solve the IT infrastructure challenge:

Once, the focus of enterprise cloud technology was all about the public cloud. Today’s leaders recognize it’s about leveraging a continuum of capabilities—one that spans everything from multiple public clouds to on-device edge computing. Those who can harness the Continuum are using the cloud not just as a single, static destination, but as a future operating model. They do this by dynamically balancing public, private, hybrid, co-location, multi-cloud, and edge with advanced practices to support the ever-changing needs of the business. Even companies that don’t choose to expand into the Cloud Continuum must manage their infrastructure and people in a cloud-like way. Otherwise, performance will suffer, cost will continue to rise and the ability to innovate will be limited. For those that do choose to exploit the transformative opportunities offered by the Cloud Continuum, their landscape must be engineered to support it. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, but a few core elements need to be in place to tap into the value of the Continuum.

According to our research, cloud leaders who transformed their people along with their technology achieved 60% higher ROI on cloud investments, than those who focused solely on the technology. There are three “no-regrets” people moves for the Infrastructure workforce that have the biggest impact on value : alignment, ability, and adoption.

Leading organizations recognize that value ultimately doesn’t come from the infrastructure itself, but from what it enables. The lesson? Be led by the needs of those who use the infrastructure. For enterprise IT, that means taking a user-centric, application-centric and data-centric approach to infrastructure. That way, an organization can exit the data center and define the best infrastructure landing zone for each application or dataset, taking into account both the value potential and the cost of migration. Accenture’s Seven Rs methodology is our framework for guiding these decisions. Hybrid infrastructure is the inevitable outcome of this business-centric approach to enterprise IT. It’s a hybrid multi-cloud world, and enterprises need a hybrid infrastructure to match.

With greater numbers of cloud-based workloads and ever-increasing amounts of data flowing throughout the enterprise, the network can easily become a bottleneck. The good news is that networks are becoming far more automated, integrated and software-defined. In particular, SD-WAN technology is transforming networks into platforms, enabling them to be configured and managed in a faster, more automated, efficient and agile way. With 5G also poised to enable enhanced cellular connectivity and private network capability, enterprises will have a range of agile options as they rethink their networks. And as organizations adapt to the post-COVID “everywhere, anywhere” workplace model, this agility will be essential.

Enterprise infrastructure has implications for all dimensions of the new hybrid workplace—the human, the physical and the digital. The key objective? To use the huge growth in compute power and data volume to reduce friction in the workplace and deliver time- and cost-saving insights. Leading organizations are already taking automation to the masses and giving more levers of control to the individual. Others are adopting a “process improvement as a service” model through a centralized hub or external provider. The Continuum also can be used to empower individuals in new ways, from smartphone-enabled access to physical and digital spaces, to augmented reality experiences for remote workers, to integrated digital workspaces that give employees access to everything they need in one primary environment, which can help streamline costs associated with day-to-day work processes.

The Cloud Continuum calls for a radical rethink of both the management platform and the operating model. Cloud management platforms help manage cloud environments with stricter security and compliance and increasing transparency across different infrastructure components, but Accenture believes enterprises should go further. By evolving the concept of a cloud management platform into a Continuum Control Plane, the organization can extend its strategy beyond a pure technology focus to encompass the entire complexity of the enterprise. That includes the processes for building and consuming Cloud Continuum capabilities, as well as the skills and capabilities of the people who use them. With a Cloud Continuum control plane, organizations can unlock new agile operating models that accelerate concept-to-cash cycles and enable better experiences for customers and employees. In short, a Continuum Control Plane provides the best of both worlds: the stability that’s essential to controlling cost and the agility that’s critical for future growth and innovation.

The Cloud Continuum is the natural evolution of enterprise IT. It enables reinventing the business through continuous innovation, powered by various types of cloud capabilities. But it’s hard to move forward when you’re spending so much just keeping the lights on. That’s why a modern infrastructure is essential.

When an organization is ready to realize next-level cloud value, it will need to rethink its approach to technology infrastructure, networks, people and workplaces. Those who can find the right balance will realize the cost-saving benefits cloud promises while unlocking new levels of competitiveness and innovation opportunities.

It’s an exciting future for enterprises. And it all rests on having a stable and optimized infrastructure foundation. That’s why the enterprise IT focus is clear—creating ever-ready infrastructure for today, while planning for a new tomorrow in the Cloud Continuum.