IDC has developed an index that determines how ready an organisation’s infrastructure is for digital and whether or not it can deliver on business outcomes. The Digital Infrastructure Resiliency Index (DIRI) uses the Digital Infrastructure Resiliency Quotient (DIRQ) to measure an organisation’s attributes across public cloud, on-prem, edge, storage, networking and more, and it found that only 7% of organisations have achieved the right levels of efficiency to achieve measurable growth and operational resilience. Mandla Mbonambi, CEO of Africonology, says that this highlights how important it is for organisations to assess their cloud readiness and build a strategy that allows them to achieve the true value of cloud and digital investments.
“There are proven benefits to investing in the cloud,” he says. “It can measurably improve efficiencies across multiple areas of the business, it can increase agility and give organisations a competitive edge, and it can make it far easier for a company to shift focus in tune with market demand and uncertainty. However, these benefits are only realised if your business has the right infrastructure in place and approaches cloud investment with a clear strategy.”
Architecting infrastructure to ensure cloud readiness asks that the business takes a long look at existing infrastructure and the realistic route it will have to take to ensure sustainable transformation. It is never going to be plug-and-play as every organisation is different and has different approaches, but it can be easier to navigate the complexities that invariably arise if you have the right team in place and an accurate view of potential sticky points.
“A DevOps team is invaluable when it comes to establishing a cloud readiness strategy and ensuring that the company is capable of adapting to its changing technology landscape,” says Mbonambi. “DevOps brings lean and agile thinking and best practice to cloud integration and infrastructure development and adds immense value across the touchpoints of software development, architecture, security integration and device management.”
This value has proven itself so often in the past that it has already gained its moniker – CloudOps. Here cloud operations and developer mentality come together to ensure that the business gets optimal value from its cloud strategy and investment. Using the expertise that is spread across data migration, architecture development, infrastructure optimisation, device management application development, network performance and security, the CloudOps team ensures that qualities such as resilience, scale, interoperability, flexibility and agility are woven throughout the organisation and its infrastructure.
“CloudOps is an intelligent route to optimising your organisation’s ability to fully realise the potential of the cloud,” says Mbonambi. “It helps you to refine your approaches to investment, infrastructure, and implementation so you are feeling the benefits of cloud from the outset, so you can see quite clearly how these benefits will run into the future. It also taps into the weight of DevOps expertise to make problem-solving and refinement part and parcel of your cloud strategy.”
CloudOps will make sure that your resources are correctly allocated and used, that your data migration is seamless, that applications can translate into the new environment, that security is managed correctly, that the business has a clear line of sight for continuity and operations throughout the move, and that compliance is woven within the fabric of cloud configuration and management.
“It is really important to ensure that your team is capable of handling every one of these elements properly so that you do not end up with configuration or functionality issues far down the line,” concludes Mbonambi. It is worth collaborating with a professional DevOps and CloudOps service provider that can offer you a holistic approach and ensure that you are not just cloud-ready, but cloud optimised.”
For more information contact Africonology, +27 11 069 6551, info@africonology.co.za, www.africonology.co.za
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