Blog Meeting the challenge of hybrid cloud management
By Insight Editor / 16 Jan 2023 / Topics: Hybrid cloud Microsoft Azure Data and AI IT modernization
Organizations have embraced digital transformation at an accelerating pace in recent times. The exponential growth of data raises the need to manage data more effectively across cloud, on-premise and edge infrastructure.
Lee Wilkinson, Technology Lead for Cloud & On-Premise Infrastructure at Insight, discusses the challenges organizations face in effectively managing their hybrid cloud infrastructure.
Organizations generate massive amounts of data and the technology solutions to effectively support data management are becoming increasingly complex. The diversity of IT systems poses the question of how to connect, centrally manage and secure infrastructure without moving all data to the cloud.
Multiple platforms
Infrastructure administrators in the Netherlands are faced with the need to manage multiple hybrid cloud environments. This means that these separate environments must be configured, managed and maintained within the separate platforms for each. This process must be repeated separately for each environment.
For example, an organization has a cloud infrastructure environment that stores its e-mail data, but it stores its customer data in an on-premises environment. This organization would have to manage these environments completely separately. Obviously, this is a hugely time-consuming and complicated process.
Compliance, security and control
Beyond the complexity of managing multiple platforms, it is also true that many organizations are looking for consistent policies for their hybrid cloud environments.
This only compounds the challenges around managing multiple environments. Achieving consistency in terms of policy, with very different platforms for each environment is not exactly easy to achieve.
Management from a centralized environment
Microsoft's new technology, Azure Stack HCI with Azure Arc, allows IT teams to extend the benefits of Azure management and security across their hybrid infrastructure.
How might Azure Stack HCI provide this?
Let's take a retail organization as an example.
Today, a national retailer probably has a headquarters and multiple stores across the country. Head office data is probably managed through a combination of Cloud and On-Premise environments. Edge environments could be used for all their stores across the country.
This setup today would require each environment to be managed separately, with policies applied to each platform to ensure security and compliance.
With Azure Stack HCI, the national retailer would be able to connect their environments through Azure. This means they can manage all their environments through the Azure platform. The cloud, on-premises and edge environments, all in one place.
And the benefits don't stop there. Azure Arc, a solution that is part of Azure HCI technology, allows Azure-based security to be deployed from the cloud to on-premises and the edge. In our example of a national retailer, this would mean that the IT team could meet the security and compliance needs they require by deploying the same policies across their cloud, on-premise and edge environments.
Retailers could also implement this solution quickly, as technology vendors such as Intel and Dell already have a wide range of Microsoft-approved HCI solutions.
As for licensing, retailers can swap their current Windows server licenses for Azure HCI stack licenses. Thus, no additional license is needed to take advantage of the operational and security benefits.
Given the retailer's example, the benefits are clear. But this is true for any organization working in hybrid cloud environments.
Azure HCI offers an opportunity to simplify hybrid cloud management, a way to consolidate environments and a chance to lay a foundation for data innovation. Insight's professional services provide organizations with an efficient and effective route for assessing, designing and implementing an Azure HCI solution.
