Agility IT Infrastructure Projects for Startups -- Ensuring the Right System for Your Unique Needs

Agility IT infrastructure projects differ remarkably between industries and business needs. Startups have many options for architecture, hosting, and scaling their new applications. Startup engineers commonly use public clouds as an infrastructure solution since they offer significant flexibility in deploying early pilots and addressing them according to usage and other factors.

However, is it possible that the app would see high and constant usage on day one? Consider the case of implementing a decision support system that processes sensitive data, connects several operational datastores, integrates with newly deployed IoT data hubs, pulls data from the ERP, triggers workflows in several SaaS solutions, and then provides analytics to employees through multiple mobile platforms. During business hours, some of these workloads will receive constant use. The amount of data being processed by others will spike when new data is being processed or when predictive analytics reprocesses months and years of data. Agility IT infrastructure projects need to factor in such fluctuations.

Choosing computing architectures for systems involving varying loads, processing large volumes of data, interacting with multiple data connections, transmitting sensitive data, and requiring high availability is more complicated than it might seem. To make this process more efficient and effective, architects must break the problem down into different domains based on platform, expected load, and security requirements, then specify optimal infrastructures for each.

Architects are often faced with this challenge. A comprehensive analysis is usually conducted from beginning to end to determine an optimal, low-risk architecture.

Architects, however, are rarely given enough time and knowledge today to carry out such detailed planning. Business leaders expect IT infrastructure to be at the same pace as startups in terms of nimbleness and responsiveness, and taking months to design and then deploy infrastructure is not acceptable. Moreover, they expect exceptional reliability as well as the use of the highest encryption level to safeguard sensitive information.

When it comes to enterprise IT departments' infrastructure agility, they must broaden their computing options to meet the enterprise's more demanding computing, reliability, performance, and security requirements. Using public clouds can be appropriate for some applications, but private clouds may be better suited for more consistent workloads and connect to several enterprise data sources. The most versatile option available to enterprises is hybrid multi-clouds, enabling them to optimally provision computing resources.

Why Agile Infrastructure and Operations Enhance Performance

Deploying to a hybrid multi-cloud is just the start. Private cloud infrastructure should offer more capabilities, and IT departments should integrate and interoperate their workloads across private and public clouds. Following are some examples of how the right infrastructure can increase IT capabilities and provide benefits.

• Data is encrypted at rest without development effort or performance impact since the encryption is implemented at the infrastructure level.
• The use of Linux, testing tools, and application development frameworks are made possible with an infrastructure that facilitates the leveraging of open source architectures.
• Developing, testing and supporting applications requires configuration and integration.
• Handle emerging technologies such as machine learning, blockchain, and IoT performance and scalability requirements.
• Manage system resources more efficiently with automation.
• When applications gain usage, the IT department needs to be more aware of costs, provide tools for optimizing them, and report on their utilization to business users.
• A key criterion for choosing infrastructure is minimizing energy consumption. The environmental footprint of data centers is becoming increasingly important to organizations.

For enterprises to remain competitive, three infrastructure factors are critical. The agility of all technology layers, including the infrastructure, should be a core capability. In other words, you need to run the whole application development lifecycle and configure infrastructure quickly. In addition, newer technologies will increase the volume and velocity of data, making it even more critical to select flexible infrastructure with tools to automate system resources. Finally, enterprises are becoming more digital, and as a result, they need reliable high performance and security from their infrastructure.

To meet expectations and requirements, IT needs to think differently. In selecting infrastructure, the IT department must look beyond hardware specifications; it's just as important as identifying the advanced capabilities that the infrastructure enables. To ensure performance, scalability, and security requirements are addressed efficiently and are not barriers to enterprise experimentation and competitiveness, IT should understand these requirements. In conclusion, new agile and DevOps capabilities will become end-to-end business enablers as versatile infrastructures and partnering with development teams are established.

GCSIT offers the expertise, cross-industry experience, and dedication to assure exceptional outcomes for businesses seeking to improve their IT processes. To learn how automation might benefit your enterprise, please download our white paper. If you want to discuss your organization's IT needs and how GCSIT specializes in agility IT infrastructure projects, please contact our helpful representatives.

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