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Navigating Digital Infrastructure: A Pathway to Enhanced Organisational Performance
Even though most firms have adopted digital infrastructure to some degree, many still do not have a detailed plan for employing the right digital infrastructure to improve their operations.

By
Apac CIOOutlook | Monday, June 05, 2023
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Digital infrastructure requires more than just choosing a cloud in using the digital infrastructure. It requires a strategy and plan that takes into account every part of a business.
FREMONT, CA: Even though most firms have adopted digital infrastructure to some degree, many still do not have a detailed plan for employing the right digital infrastructure to improve their operations. The majority of firms use legacy tools while executing a digital strategy, creating a total mismatch between digital and non-digital, leading to poor organisational performance. Looking at prospective adjustments from a value-based perspective is a straightforward method for guaranteeing that an individual is always making the appropriate choice.
Consequently, businesses have positive outcomes in certain areas while taking on risks and liabilities in others. An appropriate approach can help a company become a lean, effective machine that can challenge its competitors for business. Most significantly, having a digital strategy allows companies to better focus on their business and explore new prospects.
Assess Current infrastructure
Companies seldom know where they are headed on the digital transformation journey unless they know their starting point. Beginning with a thorough inventory of their current network, storage, and computing infrastructure is necessary. Only then can they assess where the infrastructure falls short of their requirements and what needs to be changed. They must pay attention to elements like usage patterns and efficiency. Observe how data moves between points in the infrastructure to determine if any specific bottlenecks need to be eliminated. They should consider cost-efficiency as well as the operational costs may be higher than they should be in some regions. Identifying these cost-cutting opportunities will help companies offset future expenses.
Define Goals and Requirements
Articulating what a company needs from the digital infrastructure solution is essential. Moving to virtual infrastructure and installing software-defined services, for example, could be part of the solution if the current infrastructure does not provide the required flexibility and scalability. During this stage, organisations must create a digital infrastructure that will allow them to respond rapidly to market opportunities and locate workloads and apps close to end users and cloud providers. Also, consider where to deploy the digital infrastructure to secure a strategic presence.
Finally, they must consider the demands that they may have in the future but are currently unaware of. The odds are that privacy and data protection laws are getting harsher in this sector. Thus, it will be more crucial than ever to be able to scale encryption capabilities across your global operations.
Evaluate Options
The lack of universally applicable solutions is one of the main obstacles to enterprise digital transformation. For particular requirements and obstacles, individuals must identify the special combination of tools and abilities that works best. This will incorporate a mix of on-premises, cloud, and colocated infrastructure. For instance, transferring specific workloads to the public cloud can improve scalability and enable new services on demand, but a cloud-first approach will not be appropriate in every circumstance, taking into account the possibility of higher prices and vendor lock-in. Most companies' ideal infrastructure will be created using a hybrid multi-cloud architecture. Even so, every hybrid multi-cloud architecture has a different appearance, and it will require some diligent preparation and investigation to choose the one that is best for a company.
All firms have some legacy workloads that are unsuitable for the cloud due to issues with security and compliance, service continuity, and geography. For services that are a good fit for the cloud. There will be a need to evaluate which clouds to operate in and how to integrate various cloud and on-premises components.
Partner with the Right Digital Infrastructure Company
When it comes to digital infrastructure, reputation counts just like it does with any other partner individuals work with. Businesses must make sure a potential partner has plenty of positive feedback from past clients as well as high ratings from objective industry analysts to verify they can meet the needs for digital infrastructure.
They can meet with the candidates on the shortlist to learn more about the specific solutions they provide and how those solutions fit every requirement. They must make an effort to learn about the available customer service solutions. Individuals need to be confident that their digital infrastructure partner will work with them to promptly restore service whenever a problem occurs.
Businesses should make an effort to understand the partner's future-proofing approach. This would entail not just considering how they can fulfil future technological needs, but also making sure that companies have proven to be innovative and at the forefront of sustainability concerns. Without a sustainability component, no future-proofing strategy is complete. To continue generating commercial value for many years to come, firms must operate sustainably. Collaborating with a partner who can help maintain digital infrastructure in a tidy, effective manner is a good way to start.
Analyse the Solution and Track the Journey
Benchmarking the current services will help to create clear, quantifiable KPIs for the new digital infrastructure. Without well-defined objectives to strive for, it is impossible to determine if it satisfies the needs. These objectives can include lowering network latency, enhancing the user experience, or even hitting RPO and RTO goals. Be specific and thoroughly test each need.
Individuals can gain a better understanding of how the entire deployment process will operate during the test phase. They can gauge how well their new solution works with their existing infrastructure as well as how much time and money they need to invest in training the employees. Think of the testing phase as the starting point for the digital transformation. Keep track of the progress and make adjustments if the solution is not working as expected.