The growth of data, the surge of security breaches targeting remote workers, and tighter regulatory requirements on consumer data protection, are challenging data-driven companies to rethink their approach.

“Organizations need mature modern data protection, data backup, and recovery,” said Andy Fernandez, disaster recovery product marketing manager for Zerto. Fernandez spoke at the ActualTech Media’s spring summit.

Top 5 challenges for protecting data

Companies face several challenges when it comes to improving and modernizing data protection, however. Those include:

Hybrid IT environments

Multicloud and hybrid cloud environments, with various platforms, operating systems, and geographic locations, are challenging to secure. If possible, IT should find cross-platform security tools that work across all of the environments, both on-premises and in the cloud. There are also best practices that can help ensure data is protected in a hybrid environment.

One of the most important protections is identity and access management (IAM). IAM controls user access based on an employee’s job needs. With an IAM solution, an IT manager can enforce “need to know only” access to systems.

This minimizes the potential damage when a user’s login credentials are stolen during a data breach. IAM also helps prevent an unhappy employee from stealing or destroying data.

Encryption is also a key element of data security in distributed and hybrid environments. Encrypting data traveling between clouds and between cloud and non-cloud systems makes data unusable should it be intercepted.

Many cloud providers offer consulting expertise on securing hybrid and multicloud environments. In addition, a cloud provider that specializes in managed security services can help configure and implement cross-platform cybersecurity solutions. MSPs are cloud services providers who handle many of the planning and management tasks for their customers.

Physical insecurity

With more employees connecting remotely, there’s a risk that other device users could inadvertently download malware, steal passwords (or personal data), or steal the device. As many office buildings are still half empty, it’s also easier for outsiders to steal devices or data without detection.

Social engineering and human error

A majority of cyber-attacks depend on human gullibility to succeed. Phishing is when a cybercriminal attempts to trick an unwary user into giving up confidential information or personal information. Phishing is a common social engineering method.

According to industry reports, 65% to 90% of breaches are caused by phishing or other social engineering campaigns. Ransomware, a top security threat that can cripple a business, is typically spread through social engineering.

Many security solutions filter out phishing and malware attachments, but some inevitably slip through. Training employees to recognize social engineering in an email or phone call is a critical aspect of data protection. Training is especially critical for remote and home-based workers.

Data storage and disaster recovery costs

The average in-house cost of storing a petabyte of data is nearly $2 million over five years. That includes hardware, maintenance, staffing, etc. As companies accumulate more and more data, the cost of keeping it on-premises is becoming unaffordable. Yet no business can afford data loss.

Many organizations solve this problem by turning to cloud-based disaster recovery (DR) services. Cloud DR provides a reliable storage solution at an affordable monthly cost.

The challenge is to select the disaster recovery service that best fits an organization’s budget and recovery time requirements. The recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RPO) are the two most important metrics in selecting a cloud provider.

Also read: 3 Recovery Objective Considerations for Your Disaster Recovery Plan

The RTO measures how quickly data is restored. An RTO might be an hour, a day, or just a few minutes, depending on the company’s business requirements.

RPO determines how fresh the recovered data will be. Companies in industries like e-commerce, financial services, or healthcare need to recover all of their data and restore services immediately.

Other industries might be able to lose more of their data or wait longer for full recovery in exchange for a lower cost.

Lack of expertise

Busy IT departments often lack the time or expertise to implement and manage data storage and recovery programs. Fernandez quoted from a survey on DR and data protection that found a lack of IT skills was the #1 data protection and DR challenge for organizations. Small businesses particularly lack knowledge of data storage and recovery techniques.

Learn how to overcome data protection challenges

Learn more about modernizing your data protection. Watch TierPoint and Zerto speak on data security and recovery at ActualTech’s spring summit below.

Disaster recovery services providers can assist with finding the right solution for businesses of all sizes. Providers offer:

• cloud assessments with a custom roadmap for the customer
• disaster recovery and business continuity planning
• deployment of disaster recovery solutions
• monitoring and management
• troubleshooting and tech support
• the ability for the client to subscribe to the level of service they specifically need

TierPoint’s recovery experts can provide you with expert guidance in planning, addressing RTP/RPO, implementation, monitoring, and management. Contact us today to learn more.

How Private Cloud Benefits Outweigh Other Options

Public clouds have gained widespread popularity because they offer cost savings via shared IT resources and expenses among multiple customers. Public cloud provides access to a myriad of services, like data warehousing, database services, containers, and more – in addition to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). Additionally, public cloud services can be scaled on demand, providing flexibility as an organization’s needs change.

5 Benefits of Private Cloud

A private cloud infrastructure is meant for a single organization (also known as a “single-tenant” architecture). The customer owns the hardware and can provision virtual environments to others within their organization. By design, the users have more control over their data and overall infrastructure. One benefit of the private cloud is the flexibility to customize the hardware components, which gives them the ability to handle large workloads. However, there are many benefits of private cloud, below are the top 5 reasons why an organization might opt for a private cloud over other options.

1. Private Cloud Offers More Security and Control

Due to the nature of the private cloud (you own the hardware and configuration), you’ll have full control over your infrastructure, data, and applications. Unlike other cloud platforms, you do not share resources and can maintain strict security controls to prevent unauthorized users. Since the private cloud is a single client, you can also partition that cloud for multiple departments within your organization.

While security in the public cloud has greatly improved over the past few years, organizations that must meet a high level of security and compliance — such as in finance or healthcare — may still be particular about the type of cloud used for data protection. Your IT department retains full control over hardware configuration, security services, remote access privileges, storage, and everything else.

2. Private Cloud is a Good Disaster Recovery Option

The security and control that comes with a private cloud, make this a popular option for disaster recovery. Many organizations utilize this dedicated cloud environment for replication and failover. This means that a private cloud architecture is ideal for applications and workloads that require continuous availability and no downtime.

Some organizations gain even more benefits when they partner with a data center provider to host their private cloud. With a third-party data center provider for private cloud, you get:

• Guaranteed uptime
• Physical security and access to cybersecurity expertise
• Always-on power with redundancies
• Always-on connectivity
• Geographic diversity options
• The ability to scale and take advantage of additional services

3. Private Cloud Supports Legacy Applications

Not all legacy applications can be easily migrated to a public cloud. A private cloud can be custom configured to meet the needs of an individual application, providing a possible alternative to replacing it with a new cloud application. Many private cloud options are VMware-based, so it results in an easier transition for some of those legacy workloads.

Those legacy workloads might require major rework to operate in the public cloud. Depending on the number or complexity of legacy applications, an IT department might choose to first create an interface between the legacy system and the enterprise applications in the cloud and, over time, migrate portions of the legacy application to the private cloud.

4. Hosted Private Cloud

While a private cloud can be located on-site or at a colocation facility, another option is to use a hosted private cloud (HPC). Forrester has described HPC as “combining the expertise of a cloud service provider with the isolation of a private cloud that ultimately results in comfort, savings, and a controlled pace of change.”

With a hosted private cloud services, the customer pays to lease the server and other hardware from a provider, such as TierPoint. A virtual private network (VPN) connects the customer with the HPC to ensure superior security and performance. The HPC provider also handles operational tasks including hardware maintenance, software updates, security services, and performance monitoring. It’s an approach that promises to provide the benefits of both public and private clouds in one service.

5. Hyperconvergence

Another approach to minimizing the cost and complexity of private cloud is “hyperconvergence.” A hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) uses software to merge the traditional stack — computing resources, storage, and network — into one hyperconverged unit.

Scaling up a private cloud is as easy as adding more HCI nodes to your in-house or colocated HPC rack. Data center services providers are using hyperconvergence in their hosted private cloud infrastructure. Watch this video to learn more about how it works:

Also read: Q&A: How Hyperconverged Infrastructure Works with Private Cloud

Is Private Cloud Right For Your Business?

A private cloud is, for many organizations, an integral part of their hybrid or multicloud environment. These hybrid environments may include on-premises or colocated legacy systems, public cloud, and private clouds. The hybrid strategy enables IT departments to provide an optimal computing environment for different applications and workloads.

Most IT departments lack the experience to effectively develop and support all the different cloud and on-premises environments. Managed services and cloud providers offer a range of expertise and services, from planning and migration services to performance monitoring and management. With the right support services and consulting expertise, any organization can implement a cost-effective and high-performance hybrid cloud strategy.

Learn more about the value of Hosted Private Cloud and how TierPoint can help you to build one.

Originally published in January 2020, this post was updated on June 17, 2021, to reflect changes in stats and to add more context around private cloud benefits.

What is hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI)?

HCI is a software defined “platform-in-a-box” with networking, computing, and storage services tightly integrated and installed on a commodity x86 server.

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and private clouds

Interviewer: The growing use of hyperconverged infrastructure or HCI is a private cloud architecture trend. Tell us, what is hyperconverged infrastructure and how does it work?

James: With hyperconverged infrastructure, compute, storage, and network are put together and consumed differently than in a converged infrastructure. Traditionally, private cloud architecture uses a separate external storage system accessed through a network. In contrast, hyperconverged storage is placed inside the physical footprint of the compute devices, a server with drives. Instead of using disk arrays to provide redundancy and resiliency, software-defined storage enables the virtual machines to access hyperconverged storage. Software-defined storage is not limited to private clouds but is a form of hyperconverged infrastructure used in private cloud architecture.

The network can also be hyperconverged, which is called software-defined networking. The same physical network exists, but the intelligence moves up the stack into the software. This allows the creation of additional network segments within a private cloud without physically touching the network – no need to call a network engineer to change the network switches. Instead, we use software to create routes between network segments without leaving the private cloud servers. The routing occurs within the server – without going out on a wire, finding a router, and coming back again. So HCI is both more convenient and higher performance.

With software-defined networking we can add firewall rules between network segments without going to a separate firewall. In addition, micro-segmentation enables greater security within a network segment. We can take two adjacent VMs in the same network segment and prevent them from talking to each other unless we allow it, increasing the security posture of the private cloud. Security can be placed at VM endpoints within a hyperconverged private cloud, as opposed to the edge outside of the private cloud, which also increases security.

A private cloud administrator can coordinate the hypervisor and the hyperconverged storage and network with a single management tool. The management software ensures that the physical requirements are met to enable the software-defined storage and networking.

Also read: Three Big Benefits of Private Cloud

Steve: While some customers are choosing hyperconverged infrastructures for their private clouds, others are choosing a traditional three-tier approach. With a private cloud, you can specialize it to a customer’s needs, and sometimes the three-tier converged architecture still has benefits. Hyperconverged infrastructure offers advantages in cost, scale and performance – it consolidates commodity servers with embedded storage and software-defined features, and its switching architecture can scale up if the customer needs more network throughput. But HCI is a newer technology with a learning curve. Sometimes comfort level and experience with a technology makes converged infrastructure the better choice for the customer.

More on cloud architecture

Read the first two parts of our architecture series: Q&A: Let’s Talk About Cloud Architecture and Q&A: Simplifying Private Cloud Architecture. Stay tuned for the next parts in the series where we cover multitenant, cloud security, networking, DRaaS, and multicloud/hybrid cloud architectures. To learn more about hosted private cloud and hyperconverged infrastructure for your business, contact us today.

What is private cloud architecture?

Interviewer: In this post, we’ll explore private cloud architecture. To start, what is private cloud architecture?

Steve: A private cloud is customized and purpose-built to a customer’s detailed requirements, instead of being built to suit the needs of others. All the resources are dedicated to a single entity or tenant – an individual, a group within a business, or an entire company.

James: All the compute, all the storage, and all the network are dedicated to that one entity without sharing resources with others. Refrigerator-sized racks of high-capacity x86 servers with multi-core processors and enormous amounts of memory form the compute. Data for the business lives in the storage. Storage performance has increased considerably over the past 10 years, and faster access times open avenues for data exploration. Then, the network. A private cloud requires a good, resilient network to utilize the high-performance compute and storage. The network facilitates the transfer of data from storage to compute and back, from server to server, and from user to server.

The software in a private cloud is directed by a type of operating system called a hypervisor. A workload or application typically runs on an operating system – applications can’t access hardware directly. On behalf of the applications, the OS interfaces with the hardware components – the CPU, the memory, the storage, and the network. The hypervisor enables the creation of multiple virtual machines – each running its own OS – on a single physical device. The hypervisor serves as a master gatekeeper over a single pool of compute, storage and network resources for the virtual machines to share. A private cloud architecture is like a cake: the bottom layer is the hardware, the middle layer is the hypervisor, and on top are cupcakes – each a virtual machine.

Steve: Through the VMs the hypervisor abstracts the hardware resources and manages access to them – taking time sharing and time slicing to the next level by fully virtualizing the whole stack, including storage and network. The hypervisor enables software-defined storage, software-defined networking and security features. Automation and orchestration of deployments and life cycle management, such as firmware upgrades, are also integrated into and managed by the hypervisor.

Benefits of private cloud architecture

Interviewer: I’m imagining that cupcake confection now. Let’s explore further. Why would a business set up a private cloud architecture?

James: The first of several reasons a business would opt for a private cloud is performance. In other types of clouds, your workload shares physical resources with others. Like an airline that expects some passengers not to show, a public cloud may allow more VMs to be provisioned than it can run at full capacity. This allows the cloud to extract the most value from the physical hardware, and it works because most of the time, applications sit idle. Unfortunately, sometimes all the ticket holders show up for a flight. Over-subscription has side effects when others consume all the resources. A hypervisor does its best to balance the load, but sometimes there are not enough resources available to accommodate all of the requests, so performance suffers. When you own a private cloud, you own the hardware and control the level of oversubscription to suit the needs of your business and the characteristics of your applications. No other entity can consume the resources.

Steve: A close second would be availability. You have control to ensure the availability required by your business – if you need a very high level of resiliency and redundancy, you can get it with a private cloud. The customer can select from multiple availability options, such as node failover and more granular availability options. They could decide on a chassis that contains multiple servers for redundancy or rack-level availability enhancement to survive a full-rack outage. You have control over availability in other ways too, such as deciding when upgrades take place and how change management is handled.

James: Some of the other benefits of private clouds are security, compliance and geographic specificity. Simply not sharing physical hardware or software makes it easier to create a better security posture and to meet compliance mandates. A private cloud also enables geographic choice and can improve availability locally. Public clouds tend to congregate in a limited number of areas with greater internet bandwidth, such as Texas, Washington State, and New York City. You can put a private cloud anywhere it benefits the business.

Steve: Lastly, a deciding factor in favor of a private cloud may be familiarity, comfort and the availability of expert and managed hosting services. A private cloud architecture can enable a customer to fully leverage the expertise of the IT staff they already have. As the closest cloud technology to what many companies are doing in house, a private cloud can be an excellent choice for businesses stepping into cloud computing. Your staff know the hardware and how it works at a deep level because you decide what’s in your private cloud architecture. Also, when you want help, a private cloud hosting provider, such as TierPoint, can guide you in selecting the best vendors and services to meet your specific requirements.

Also read: Big Benefits of Private Cloud (and How to Take it to The Next Level)

Private cloud vs. public cloud architecture

Interviewer: How does a private cloud architecture differ from a public cloud architecture?

James: Fundamentally, the compute, storage, and network components are the same in private clouds and public clouds. The biggest difference is scale, and that difference in scale is huge. A private cloud is much smaller than a public cloud. Another difference is software architecture, which results in different interfaces for consuming resources. A private cloud can run more applications without rewriting or refactoring them and can ease compliance with legacy software licensing terms that weren’t written with cloud computing in mind.

Steve: Isolation from other customer workloads is another difference. Isolation can be important for security – and for compliance where a customer can’t allow their data to coexist in a public cloud that is also storing the data of other customers. Isolation also improves performance in that it prevents noisy neighbor situations. A customer may want to be able to guarantee that the performance they require is always available to their workloads, and they can’t do that if they share resources with other customers.

Cost of ownership: Private vs. public cloud architecture

Interviewer: Before we go, is there anything more you would like to add?

James: Costs are often a deciding factor in business decisions. You control costs and eliminate surprise bills with a private cloud. Unforeseen costs are common with a public cloud, especially when a business first migrates. On the other hand, private cloud architecture has a minimum footprint, which may drive costs too high for a very small business. In that case, costs would be lower in a public cloud, but fewer businesses are starting to fit that model. Hardware for private clouds continues to drop in price and, paired with hyperconverged infrastructure, a private cloud architecture can be practical for even a small office with a few employees. The low barrier to entry of a private cloud can sum to less than the price of a new car. In these ways, a private cloud can help a business of any size ensure predictable and controlled cloud computing costs.

More on cloud architecture

Stay tuned for the next part where we discuss how private cloud and hyperconverged infrastructure work together. To learn more about managed private cloud for your business, contact us today.

 Cloud platforms advantages and disadvantages

To help you understand the differences in cloud platforms, we’ve put together a list of cloud platform options and their pros and cons.

Public cloud

A public cloud platform uses a multitenant architecture which customers share, along with the cost. The provider owns and controls the hardware and software infrastructure. Public cloud services include everything from infrastructure services such as Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3), and Microsoft’s Azure platform service for developing custom applications, to ready-to-use software applications, like Microsoft Office 365.

Public cloud advantages

• Cost-effective for commonly used applications, such as sales or productivity applications and storage services
• Allows rapid, on-demand increase in capacity to meet peak usage needs
• Cloud subscription fees, as operating expenses, are more predictable and affordable than upfront capital investments for on-site data centers
• Built for global reach and provides anywhere access for distributed and mobile workers
• Additional services such as management, backup or development tools are often available

Public cloud disadvantages

• Resources such as servers and network bandwidth are shared, and performance can suffer during busy times
• Customization of public cloud applications is limited
• Customer’s security must fit the cloud provider’s standards

Also read: A Strategy to Overcome Cloud Computing Security Risks for a cloud platform security comparison

Private cloud

In a private cloud environment, the hardware and software belong to just one customer. A private cloud may be located in your own data center or hosted at a third-party data center. Compared to a public cloud, a private cloud platform offers organizations maximum control over hardware selection and software customization, but at the greatest cost.

Private cloud advantages

• Customer selects the hardware, software, and location of its private cloud
• Single-tenant architecture provides more consistent performance
• Well suited for legacy applications that can’t be migrated to a standard public cloud environment
• Hosted private clouds benefit from the providers’ infrastructure redundancy and resilience

Private cloud disadvantages

• Customers bear full cost of on-premise private clouds, including security, network monitoring, and other IT staff services and facility maintenance
• Customers of both hosted and on-premise clouds must buy their own hardware and software

Also read: Big Benefits of Private Cloud (and How to Take it to The Next Level)

Hybrid Cloud and Multicloud

According to Gartner, most businesses opt for multiple clouds and/or a mix of cloud and non-cloud platforms in their infrastructure. These are known as hybrid and multicloud environments. A hybrid cloud environment uses a mix of technologies, cloud or non-cloud. A multicloud environment uses multiple cloud platforms.

Hybrid Cloud and Multicloud advantages

• Operating expense (OpEx) for cloud services can replace the capital expense (CapEx) of new hardware allowing for more cost control.
• With these deployments, you can choose the best environment for your application or workload
• Flexibility to adjust compute, cloud storage, and network bandwidth as business demands change
• Built with reliability and redundancy in mind. You can failover to other clouds in your hybrid or multicloud environment

Hybrid Cloud and Multicloud disadvantages

• Specific skill sets are needed to manage these types of environments
• Ensuring interoperability of data and applications between clouds and different systems can be challenging without proper automation, APIs and standards in place
• Perceived loss of control or visibility if your team isn’t on the same page
• There is more to protect, these environments need a comprehensive cybersecurity plan

So which cloud platform is right for you?

When selecting the platform(s) for your cloud environment, first evaluate your in-house IT resources, as well as the requirements of each application. Highly security-sensitive applications and data might do best in a private cloud, while common work applications such as sales or office productivity applications could run in a public cloud.

TierPoint’s team of experts can help you devise a cloud strategy and match the best cloud platforms with your IT requirements and business goals. TierPoint can also provide a range of managed services to help with day-to-day operations, including security monitoring, network management, disaster recovery, and compliance. Contact us today to learn more.

But can anyone fathom how effective the cloud and digital transformation are together? We do know that companies that advance cloud deployments and digital transformation together in synchronization will gain a competitive advantage the likes of which few generations have lived to see.

By looking at the benefits and the cloud deployments that digital transformation demands, organizations can ensure that they enjoy all the advantages.

Interweaving hybrid cloud & digital transformation

Digital transformation enables organizations to innovate changes across business processes and technologies to meet evolving market demands. Dynamic, application-centric infrastructures allow dynamic workloads and strategic business shifts. Organizations are adopting hybrid cloud strategies in multi-cloud environments to support that dynamic infrastructure.

The hybrid cloud is a design approach that combines differing IT infrastructures, clouds and/or services to provide for a collective solution. These unique IT infrastructures and workloads support applications of IoT, analytics, AI, and mobile access to business services, which are critical components of digital transformation strategies.

The cloud provides cost efficiencies and reduces in-house IT footprint and overall IT maintenance. As the cloud enables digital transformation, it also speeds go-to-market and increases market share. The cloud’s scalable, malleable IT resources are the foundation for digital transformation, allowing accelerated business evolution through nimble infrastructure that makes change affordable.

It’s no wonder then that sixty-five percent of organizations are citing digital transformation as a key driver for their move to the cloud, according to Karyn Price, senior industry analyst, Frost & Sullivan.

Digital transformation is as beneficial to the cloud as the cloud is to it. Organizations using the cloud see increased cost savings when they implement a digital transformation strategy, according to a Cloud Industry Forum report. Companies that achieve digital transformation see an average cost savings of 26-percent while those that don’t see a 9-percent savings, according to that same report.

Together, digital transformation and multi-cloud deployments provide competitive advantages, which are vital as business competition ramps up. According to data from an ITProPortal survey, 70-percent of businesses globally say competitive pressure is the primary driver behind digital transformation. And more than a third say failure to complete digital transformation projects will result in competitors having the business advantage over them. Digital transformation improves the customer experience, which is key to competitive advantage.

Competing in today’s increasingly digital economy depends on the organization’s ability to run workloads in the most appropriate cloud environments–whether the goal is to take advantage of cost savings or capitalize on performance optimization opportunities, according to CIO.

     Also read: Big Data, BI and AI Driving Cloud Adoption

Applying private cloud to digital transformation

Using the private cloud, organizations can adopt digital transformation strategies by tailoring multi-cloud environments that offer the benefits of a private data center and a public cloud (by connecting to the public cloud as needed).

Using on-premises and managed hosted private cloud environments, organizations can ensure security, application control, and regulatory compliance due to the private cloud’s similarities to a private data center. Enterprises can count on reliable networking from a managed services provider when they use the private cloud. They can ensure application performance because they have dedicated the infrastructure to the application at hand. Using private cloud hosting, organizations can limit costs, offload expert labor and resource requirements, and keep workloads in nearby data centers.

Digital transformation is a core competency at TierPoint. TierPoint enables multi-cloud environments combined with a broad portfolio of traditional hosted and managed services, like security and networking. Contact us today to learn more.

Learn more while enjoying the “Accelerating Your Hybrid Strategy with Private Cloud” webinar from TierPoint.

The increasing hybridization of corporate IT is a key finding of 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise survey. The study found that 58% of companies are or will be adopting a hybrid mix of cloud and non-cloud infrastructure, while another 12% are moving to a combination of public and private cloud. Conversely, just 30% plan to adopt some type of “pure” environment, either public cloud (18%), on-premises cloud (4%) or on-premises non-cloud (8%). 

Watch the webinar to hear Melanie Posey discuss more findings
from the Voice of the Enterprise survey. 

Why are hybrid models popular? For many reasons. In Posey’s survey, over a third (35%) of the respondents use a multi-cloud or hybrid IT model to do dynamic workload management, moving workloads as needed based on factors such as cost, security and available resources.

 Other reasons involve dividing the types of applications. Nearly a third (31%) use on-premises resources for legacy workloads while putting workloads on public or hosted cloud environments, and 27% keep internal business systems and data on premises while moving the external, customer-facing applications to public or hosted cloud environments. Finally, a quarter of the respondents use cloud services only for off-site backup and disaster recovery.

Also, some move to a hybrid model after they’ve experimented with cloud services and opt to keep some cloud apps while moving others back to an on-premises or colocation facility.

Read: Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Cloud Computing Trends

Posey describes the most popular workload deployments for cloud and non-cloud environments.

• Public cloud. Ideal for highly distributed or highly variable workloads that can benefit from on-demand and scalable processing power. Many companies opt to put the customer-facing portions of their applications on a public cloud for easy accessibility and cloud scalability. The cloud services architecture also supports a DevOps methodology much better than legacy infrastructure.

• Managed public cloud. A public cloud with managed services provides expertise that a business may lack. Managed services providers can handle the initial migration, security, compliance, help desk support and day-to-day administration of the platform or applications. A managed cloud enables organizations to keep in house the things they’re good at and outsource those that they aren’t.

• Hosted private cloud. Having a third party host your private cloud gives you a private, dedicated environment without the capital cost and difficulty of building one in house. It’s often used when a company has special compliance or performance needs that a public cloud might not meet. It’s also useful for dealing with a combination of legacy systems-of-record and new cloud applications.

• On-premises and colocated non-cloud. On-site and colocation are common options for legacy and customized applications that can’t easily be moved to the cloud, as well as for data that is extremely sensitive or workloads subject to performance and latency issues.

• Bare-metal cloud. Cloud infrastructure has evolved to offer faster performance for data-intensive workloads. A bare-mental cloud server, which doesn’t have the overhead of virtualization, can handle short-term, data-intensive functions such as in big-data applications, with minimal latency.

While going with a hybrid model might be part of your cloud enabled digital transformation, the fact is that few IT executives know all of their infrastructure needs at the start of a cloud migration. Hybrid infrastructures tend to evolve, based on changing needs and resources.

“Nobody sits down and plans out a hybrid IT strategy. It just happens,” said Posey. “In the journey to digital transformation, one size does not fit all.”

Contact us to learn how we can help you find and migrate to the right environment for your business.   

Somewhat paradoxically, this good news may leave some businesses in a bit of a bind. After a decade or more of belt-tightening, many are finding themselves without the agility required to make the most of the economic recovery.

Recently, a change in PCI regulations prompted Potbelly, a fast-growing sandwich business with more than 420 locations, to revisit their IT infrastructure. As noted in her article on HospitalityTech.net, Maryann Byrdak, Potbelly’s CIO, decided it was also a good time to consider whether their current infrastructure could keep up with their growth plans:

 “As Potbelly’s CIO, I am responsible for modernizing our cloud strategy to accommodate the company’s ambitious growth plans and changing PCI compliance requirements. To meet our business goals, Potbelly needs an agile, flexible and secure IT infrastructure to support critical applications including business intelligence and credit card processing. At the same time, we did not want to own or maintain infrastructure components.” 

Potbelly partnered with TierPoint to move from their current multitenant cloud environment to a hosted private cloud that better met their security and compliance requirements and gave them the agility they needed to meet their growth goals. We’re looking forward to partnering with Potbelly to help them grow and witness their transformation to the sandwich shop of the future.

Learn more about Potbelly’s transformation from a panel discussion at BraveIT 2018, where Ms. Byrdak was featured in Bravery in the Midst of Digital Transformation: Success Stories. 

Read the full article on Hospitalitytech.com.