Helping a customer move to the cloud is much more than just choosing a cloud provider with the widest range of services and most cost-effective storage. It's about helping your customers create an infrastructure that can meet future demand and delivery requirements in an increasingly digital and connected world. With the right hybrid set-up, the move to the cloud will be more successful.
In a hybrid environment, you can build customised solutions for your customers, without forcing everything into one cloud, thus creating a flexible IT architecture to handle existing and future IT needs. By ensuring good interconnectivity, you get the business- and business-critical on-premises systems and the cloud-based applications to work optimally together.
1. Start from the customer's future digital challenges and needs
A move to the cloud should be seen as a chance for an inventory of applications and systems. What cloud services are used today? What is installed in existing on-premises systems? What does it look like with integrations internally and externally? With a thorough review of the IT environment, there is the opportunity to consolidate systems, upgrade licenses and streamline IT processes. Start from the company's future challenges and needs in an increasingly digital business climate. A hybrid infrastructure helps to secure the customer's IT in the future and create better conditions for meeting future challenges.
However, not all systems are suitable for moving to the cloud. These may be systems where data must be handled and stored within the country's borders for security reasons or legacy systems that are not suitable for cloud operation or must be installed on specific hardware. Furthermore, some systems should be located in private clouds where the customer has greater control over the environment, while others can advantageously be placed in larger public clouds. At the same time, the communication between all cloud and on-premises systems and the users needs to work seamlessly through fast, stable and secure connection.
2. Hybrid IT can solve complex customer requirements
There are several strategies for transferring various IT functions to the cloud. Each strategy has its advantages and disadvantages and offers different opportunities for migration and integration. The choice of systems and applications usually leads to a multi-cloud environment and a mix of cloud and on-premise solutions. A solution can seldom meet all requirements and in order to meet the customer's needs, a hybrid solution is therefore the best solution.
Here, a neutrally connected data centre can play a central role in cloud migration and when it comes to managing multi cloud and hybrid IT in a flexible and secure way. With secure and fast connections, low latency and high up-time, you can more easily meet the requirements of a hybrid IT infrastructure. It also allows you to broaden your offering and provide a more flexible and tailored architecture for your customers, with a customised operation in a connected data centre.
3. Let the data centre be your strategic cloud partner
An important step in guiding your customers on their cloud journey is to take the customer to the cloud - not just the cloud to the customer. Evaluating the connection between the customer's private infrastructure and the cloud will then be central. In a hyper-connected data centre, your customers can get physically close to the major cloud providers and have their IT environment directly connected to the clouds that are important to them in their business. In this way, you can ensure a higher performance in the customer's IT infrastructure. With a direct connection to one or more clouds, your customers do not have to rely on an insecure Internet, which can only offer the currently "best possible" connection.
In a hyper-connected data centre, you can also offer your customers an ecosystem of IT providers and network operators. It is an environment that promotes collaboration, which can also contribute to your own business development and new alliances. In a neutral colocation, suppliers that offer today's architecture such as SaaS, PaaS and IaaS are gathered, but also the services of the future in cloud deliveries and service offerings. A neutrally connected data centre also offers proximity to important Internet exchanges (Internet Exchanges), where the exchange of data between different Internet operators takes place. This means that you and your customers can benefit from a faster direct connection between different cloud providers in the data centre, and thus the various services and systems that are part of the IT environment.
Do you want to find out more about how cloud migration and collaboration in a shared data centre can become an important part of taking the cloud to the customer in a hybrid IT environment? Get in touch today.