Is your IT Operations Strategy fit for purpose?

The quality of service delivered by an IT organisation is highly dependent on the robustness of their IT operations management strategy. It is critical that IT teams choose the operational model that best fits each individual application, as different workloads are likely to be placed in different locations.

In particular, a decision must be made on which applications should be supported by the internal operations team and which should be supported externally.

The spectrum of possible delivery models for IT Operations is fairly complex, but could be summarised into three main options:

1. In-house Operations: the internal IT organisation is responsible for the management of IT operations.
2. Managed Operations the management of IT operations is outsourced to a third-party provider with dedicated personnel in a dedicated environment.
3. As-a-Service: the enterprise consumes SaaS, PaaS and IaaS services sourced from public cloud providers, who deliver the services with personnel that manages a shared environment for multiple customers.

The choice of operations management model depends on the workload classification and specific requirements of the organisation. For some companies, especially start-ups, the choice is relatively easy, as they can move to the public cloud outright, through either a single-source public cloud or multi-cloud strategy. However, a more complex Digital Enterprise that has to juggle compliance constraints, performance requirements and legacy applications, is more likely to implement a hybrid IT delivery model, leveraging a combination of the three options above. If one looks at the combination of operations management and working placement models, the following matrix emerges:

From the perspective of an enterprise having to make decisions related to application performance and cost of networking infrastructure, the matrix translates into four IT delivery strategies to consider:

1. On-premise: In this strategy, workloads are housed within the enterprise data centre and managed in-house by the enterprise IT team.
2. Outsourced/hosted: In this strategy, enterprises may outsource operations management, outsource the data centre operations, or system infrastructure ownership to a third party (other than colocation or public cloud providers).
3. Public Cloud: In this strategy, workloads are managed as-a-service by the cloud service provider, who own the entire application stack and determine the best combination of placement options to deliver the services.
4. Colocation: In this strategy, enterprises retain full control of the application as well as operational control of their dedicated space within the data centre (either directly or through a third party service provider). Additionally, if the colocation centre is highly connected, they have access to the communities of interest that are colocated in close proximity.

Since an enterprise is likely to require a hybrid IT environment, the ability to simultaneously manage a variety of IT delivery models is a key capability to enable the success of the digital transformation initiatives.

If you are responsible for IT delivery, why not speak to one of our solutions architects who can help you design a solution that works for your current and future business needs.