CBRComputer Business Review

Data Centre Modernisation

Becoming a digital business by modernising your data centre

Out with the old, in with the newThe old normal – legacy infrastructure – still proves to be a major roadblock for those looking to adopt cloud. A data centre refresh is a daunting prospect – for years and years organisations have invested heavily into specific network, storage and computing capabilities, building a unique data centre in which to manage and host their mission-critical applications. Not only has the hardware and software seen huge amounts of investment, but also the skills and knowledge required to run such systems – meaning the enterprise data centre has become a money pit of the digital age.

This money pit is only set to get deeper and more expensive. Maintenance, upgrades, new functionality – all of which can only be rolled out across the organisation at considerable cost. Expense, unfortunately, is not the only hindrance of staying on-premise. Upgrades and new functionality are slow

to be developed and released, limiting your ability to launch new competitive features or service offerings. There’s also the added risk of maintaining legacy systems without the skilled staff – retirement having to be postponed because there’s simply no one else that can do their job.

On-premise is the ball on the enterprise chain, offering inflexibility, expense and keeping an organisation shackled to slow, uncompetitive processes – all of which are not fit for a business operating in the digital age.

The digital age also brings with it an abundance of data, the bedrock of business today. According to IDC’s Digital Universe, by 2020 the digital world will contain as many digital bits as there are stars in the physical universe. IDC goes on to forecast that it will also double in size every two years, and the data we create and copy annually will hit a huge 44 ZB by 2020.

For both businesses on-premise and those tied to data centre providers, the proliferation of data requires scalability and agility – both of which are key demands not met by legacy solutions. For example, a retailer facing the demands of Black Friday can now utilise the elasticity and scalability of the cloud to deal with spikes in demand without compromising performance or budget. In the old world, it would take six months of planning in order to prepare server capacity for an unexpected traffic surge. Businesses must be able to react to changing market conditions and customer demand, with that flexibility found in cloud infrastructure platforms and most notably Microsoft Azure.

In the years ahead, success will be won by data. Those who can harness the true power of data will be able to outperform competitors – not just in the areas of scalability and performance, but also in innovation.

Businesses today have a fight on their hands. In one corner you have the proliferation of data, increasing customer demands, rising costs and regulatory burdens. In the other corner, you have costly on-premise servers and datacentres, with one arm maybe pinned down and tied to providers giving nothing but constraints and inflexibility. Safe to say, it’s not a fair fight. But it could be. Greater still, it doesn’t even need to be a fight, but a transformation opportunity offering businesses a myriad of benefits and opportunities in the digital age.

A modern business needs a modern data centre – and businesses are waking up to that reality.

There seems to be no stopping the march to cloud, with a Synergy Research 2017 review highlighting that the cloud market hit $180 billion at the end of 2017, having grown by 24% on an annualised basis. IaaS & PaaS services had the highest growth rate at 47%, followed by enterprise SaaS at 31% and hosted private cloud infrastructure services at 30%.

If 2015 was the year that cloud went mainstream, and 2016 was the year that cloud overtook hardware and software spend, then 2017 was the year in which cloud became the new normal.

Are You Cloud Ready?

Whether you are unsure of how to begin your cloud journey, or if you are currently functioning with outdated

hardware or operating systems, New Signature experts, through a unique Cloud Readiness Assessment, can help

you define ways to leverage your existing investment as part of your journey to the cloud.

Counting the Cost of CloudOne of the major benefits of moving to cloud is cost, eliminating the money pit of legacy. Moving to cloud allows an organisation to reduce the total cost of ownership of its data centre estate, with hardware and operating costs cut significantly thanks to hardware consolidation. Resulting in fewer servers, the cost of hardware, maintenance, support and energy for cooling and power are all reduced significantly.

Basically, when it comes to cloud data centre environments like Microsoft Azure, everything is taken care of. Where once before a business would have to factor in the cost and time spent on backup, power and storage, Azure handles all three. Better still, tapping into Azure’s stability and resilience ensures that downtime is minimal and increases the availability of applications. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg of benefits. Add to the list the future potential for developing, testing, and adding new services quickly then there’s starting to look like a long list of positives.

Should that not be enough however, Azure’s global reach and presence provides seemingly unrestricted opportunity for extending into new geographic markets at incredible speed even when multiple local data tenancies are required, meaning your business is no longer waiting for physical expansion of the infrastructure required to support growth.

“Many businesses gain substantial financial benefit from moving to the cloud from a traditional data environment, mainly because they are shifting from a capital expenditure model to an operational pay-as-you-go, pay-per-minute consumption-based model. That opens up a myriad of ways to become more agile and competitive,” comments Bryan Lloyd, Technology Transformation Director at New Signature UK.

“Reducing the total cost of ownership is one of the huge benefits of moving to Azure – backup, power, storage and management costs are reduced and handled by Azure. Plus, as costs decrease, performance increases.”

However, the benefits of cloud are not just tied to hardware and operations; cloud impacts the productivity and efficiency of a business too. It’s common sense – improved application performance and availability equals improved employee productivity, better accuracy and timeliness of business information. When it comes to applications, Azure accelerates the development and testing, reducing bottlenecks in IT and allowing IT dependent business change to happen more rapidly.

When it comes to counting the cost of cloud, Crossrail Limited is a striking case in point. Working to deliver the Elizabeth Line in central London, Crossrail was faced with time-critical software upgrades and turned to Microsoft Azure for rapid deployment of IT systems. Realising that it was significantly quicker to use the Microsoft Azure platform to update the applications rather than a pre-existing hosted datacentre, Crossrail was able to work with New Signature to build the required server and networking infrastructure in a fraction of the time it would have taken on-premises. This enabled the deployment of updated versions of key legacy business applications used within the organisation.

“Our initial requirements were to build out the Azure environment to enable us to test and upgrade a small but critical application in a short time frame. The Microsoft Azure cloud platform allowed us to do this quickly, without the typical lengthy lead times and expenses associated with such a project,” said Chris Waters, Head of Technology and Architecture at Crossrail.

“The result has been a resilient, scalable platform that will allow implementation of further services in the future. The implementation was painless and the level of professionalism and support provided by New Signature was excellent.”

Security in the CloudData breaches and outages have become public discourse in recent times, with millions of customers being impacted and millions of pounds being lost in business and reputational damage. Added to this is the wave of new legislation and regulation, putting increasing pressures on businesses to comply or face significant fines. Unfortunately, not all businesses have the resources to implement enterprise-grade security at scale which presents very real challenges when faced with growing cyber threat and the need to meet regulatory compliance. However, shifting to a modern data centre and pairing with Microsoft Azure gives businesses of all sizes the reach and resources required to secure and comply. Bryan Lloyd from New Signature says “Undeniably, the cloud can offer levels of security that are hard to achieve and maintain in legacy on-premise environments. Gone are the days where businesses felt reticent about storing sensitive data in the public cloud. In fact, NHS Digital has recently announced it has chosen Microsoft Azure to house patient-confidential data. One of our customers in the Financial Services industry is now using the Azure cloud to meet regulatory compliance which couldn’t be achieved using on-premise infrastructure.

“So, there’s a real paradigm shift in people’s thinking. However, security and governance are often neglected when businesses first start to think about their move to the cloud, so we help customers to effectively plan that security element of their overall migration strategy to ensure they have a platform for success.”

Undoubtedly, transitioning to cloud services requires a different way of thinking about security and ultimately cloud security is a shared responsibility. Moving to the cloud takes away

some security related problems like physical data centre security and server hardware, and returns benefits around data replication, automated failover and greater information security.

NHS Wandsworth CCG worked with New Signature to replace its entire patchwork of costly, legacy corporate systems with a future-proof Microsoft cloud IT environment. In addition to increasing staff productivity and enabling clinical teams to work and collaborate across disciplines using mobile working, data security was also enhanced. All confidential patient information transferred via Office 365 and stored in Azure is completely secure, with backed-up data replicated in the cloud. This offered an immediate business continuity advantage so that if the CCG experienced a natural disaster or cyber-attack, it could continue to work unaffected. “The environment gives us enhanced service and immediate business continuity. We simply could not have achieved the guaranteed uptime SLAs in an on-premise environment,” said Rizwan Malik, Head of Information, Performance & Technology Management at Wandsworth CCG.

“In the recent cyber-attack, we were unaffected, and we have reassurance from Microsoft that we will continue to be protected in the future.”

Innovation and the Modern Data CentreInnovation waits for no man – or business – with emerging technologies like AI and automation gripping the imaginations of both the public and business leaders alike. Those who are late to adopt quickly lose their competitive edge, being left behind by those who have the ability to innovate. This is one of the big benefits of a modern data centre, giving businesses access to the latest cloud technology and offering the most transformative capabilities.

Digital transformation is not a static, one-time-only shift or change. It is an on-going process which will continue to evolve. Legacy infrastructure has reduced capacity to change and evolve, making it a restrictive solution for those who want to

truly transform. Cutting total cost of ownership, increasing agility, scalability and performance, as well as improved governance and security are all achievable by building a modern data centre – a journey which New Signature can plan, implement, deploy and manage to ensure the future-proofing of your business in the digital age.

“New Signature partnered with us to provide technical expertise that accelerated our deployment of systems into the Cloud. Together we have set up a base architecture covering networking and user directory services, as well as delivery of core services such as our paper, print and bind ordering application,” said Jay Hunter, Head of Infrastructure and Enterprise Operations at News Corp Europe, HarperCollins.

“With the rapidly evolving nature of Cloud, there have been twists and turns on our journey and I am pleased to say New Signature have proved to be flexible and accommodating throughout.”

Modern Datacentre – driving the digital business The modern data centre has become the right-fit backbone for the digital business, providing the agility, security, scalability and innovative core that removes the burden of legacy, freeing up the business to get on with what is truly important. The process of transformation is on-going but aligning with a specialist partner that is understanding of the complexities and opportunities is the best business decision that can be made as you start on that transformative journey.

Bryan Lloyd concludes “Many businesses are now aware of the benefits of moving to a modern data centre. An organisation can undeniably be a lot more agile and competitive in that environment. The time required to bring new ideas to fruition and launch them into market is far quicker. So, it’s a question of how best to move down that path and we take customers on a journey from assessment though to migration and ongoing management that gets them to where they need to be quickly and successfully.”

About New SignatureNew Signature is a cloud-first, full-service Microsoft solution provider focused on delivering great customer experiences through transformative business solutions. The New Signature team delivers full lifecycle solutions—from project inception and planning, through deployment to ongoing support, management and maintenance. To find out more, email hello@newsignature.com, visit www.newsignature.com or check out @newsignatureuk.