What to consider when replacingupgradingmigratingdeploying new IT infrastructure
Whether it’s your first server, a replacement for aging equipment or an addition to meet growing business needs, selecting the right type of IT Infrastructure can be confusing.
- How do you distribute your spend for best value?
- Does your business run legacy applications?
- Would your business benefit for data scalability?
- Does your current system have fail-over capabilities?
In order to get the best value, you need a technology partner who understands your operational objectives and can cut through the jargon. We have designed server systems to accommodate anywhere from 5 to 200 users and can design you a complete server solution including software, backup systems and anti-virus protection.
"In a hybrid IT world, IT infrastructure is located wherever the business needs it, meaning that data is located everywhere, too. By 2022, more than 50% of enterprise data will be created and processed outside the data center or cloud, up from less than 10% in 2019." - Gartner
When is it time to decommissionreplaceupgrade your on-premise servers?
Are you experiencing any of the below within your business?
In order to maintain efficiency in the workplace it is essential to maintain optimal server speed. We can help you determine if your server is running reliably and if a replacement is needed.
When your operating system is no longer supported, it is recommended to replace your server and take advantage of new hardware.
This number can vary depending on the type of server, however once it is over three years old, support costs increase by 40%.
Is your business systems hitting capacity due to growth? Is your business planning to expand in the near future? Do you need flexibility of resources?
Costly unexpected upgrades and hardware replacements can hurt the bottom line. Less hardware repairs and upgrade costs means less IT expenditure.
Can your business afford downtime? Average downtime with traditional IT infrastructure is 4 times longer than those witnessed with Cloud Computing.
"In 2020, 81 percent of technology decision-makers indicated that their company already made use of at least one cloud application or relied on some cloud infrastructure." - Statista
Hybrid Infrastructure
A hybrid infrastructure, or hybrid cloud, is an IT environment comprised of a combination of on-premises datacenters, private clouds and/or public clouds. Enterprise systems and applications are designed and deployed depending on the organisation’s business needs and requirements.
Organisations may opt for this kind of IT infrastructure design for example if they want to leverage emerging business trends, while enabling the data and functionality of on-premise legacy applications.
Hybrid infrastructure uses does require companies like Alliance Business Technologies to help manage and monitor an enterprise’s entire IT infrastructure. This is important as IT environments and requirements continue to become more complex.
Cloud Infrastructure
Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, a growing collection of integrated services – analytics, computing, database, mobile, networking, storage and web – for moving faster, achieving more and saving money.
Azure’s pay-as-you-go services can quickly scale up or down to match demand, so you only pay for what you use. Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines allow you to deploy a wide range of computing solutions in an agile way. With Azure cloud servers, you can deploy nearly instantaneously, and you pay only by the minute. With Windows, Linux, SQL Server, Oracle, IBM, SAP, and BizTalk, you can deploy any workload, any language, on nearly any operating system.
Azure cloud servers are certified for FISMA, FedRAMP, HIPAA, PCI DSS Level 1, and other key compliance programs—which makes it easier for your own Azure applications to meet compliance requirements and for your business to address a wide range of domestic and international regulatory requirements.
The available deployment types for this solution:
- Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): An IaaS model involves cloud service providers delivering capabilities such as data storage, networking, servers, and virtualization to their customers. The customer can access as much computing power or data storage as they require but needs to have their own software platform to run it. This involves the use of applications, data, middleware, operating systems, and runtime services. IaaS is the most hands-on form of cloud delivery model, requiring organizations to control and maintain most of their own cloud resources.
- Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): The PaaS approach sees cloud service providers deliver the entire cloud infrastructure to customers. This means the data, networks, servers, and virtualization of the infrastructure will be delivered through a platform of operating systems, runtime services, and middleware. This approach enables organizations to deploy, develop, operate, and test their software and applications in a cloud environment, without the cost and complexity that typically come with building an on-premises IT infrastructure.
- Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): A SaaS model involves cloud service providers delivering applications through web-based portals. The SaaS approach is the most popular, widely used cloud service delivery model. All data storage is located on the service provider’s servers. Customers do not have to store application information on local hard disks, which takes a lot of hard work away from organizations. SaaS providers are responsible for delivering the entire technology stack, which includes maintaining applications and the cloud infrastructure that supports them.
IT Infrastructure BenefitsOptions Available
We offer two different IT Infrastructure solutions to suit your business requirements.
Hybrid Infrastructure
- Opportunities to test, innovate, and shift to the cloud at your own pace.
- Control: Instead of trusting a third-party cloud provider to manage every aspect of a company’s IT infrastructure, our Managed Services team can customize and adjust the private end of its hybrid model to fit its needs, maintaining control over critical operations and data.
- Scalability: A hybrid infrastructure allows a company to tap into the flexibility and power of the public cloud to seamlessly increase its operational capacity when computing demands spike, while allowing business-critical data and operations to remain in the private cloud or an on-premise data center. Changing out hardware and software is much faster and easier in a cloud environment compared to traditional network infrastructure, where upgrading can take weeks or even months.
- Security: With a hybrid cloud model, businesses can leverage the security of on-premises infrastructure and private cloud while taking advantage of the power and services of a public cloud—reducing the potential exposure of critical data. While data stored in a private environment will likely still have to run on a public cloud for analytics and applications, an encryption protocol can be used to minimize security breaches. Organizations can also decide where in the cloud to house their data and workloads based on policy, compliance and security requirements.
- Cost savings: From a cost perspective, hybrid cloud storage is an attractive alternative to a purely private cloud, which can be expensive to update and expand over time. A hybrid infrastructure allows a company to optimize its IT spending while lowering operational expenses with the secure, scalable public cloud for non-mission critical parts of its business. Hybrid cloud vendors often allow companies to pay for public cloud services only when they need them.
- Business continuity: Hybrid environments allow the public cloud to absorb workload surges, so as computing demands increase or suddenly spike, private servers won’t be overloaded. Companies can also back up data by duplicating it to the cloud. This ensures that, in the event of a disaster or computing failure, business operations will not be interrupted.
Azure Cloud Infrastructure
- Centralised backup service in the cloud:
- Run your Apps Anywhere: As the best cloud service from Microsoft, Azure runs on a worldwide network of Microsoft-managed datacenters across 22 regions—more countries and regions than Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud combined. This fast-growing global footprint gives you lots of options for running applications and ensuring great customer performance. Azure is also the first multinational cloud provider in mainland China.
- Use an Open and Flexible Cloud Service Platform: Azure supports the broadest selection of operating systems, programming languages, frameworks, tools, databases and devices. Run Linux containers with Docker integration; build apps with JavaScript, Python, .NET, PHP, Java and Node.js; build back-ends for iOS, Android and Windows devices. Azure cloud service supports the same technologies millions of developers and IT professionals already rely on and trust.
- Data Backup: Simplify tape management with significant cost savings, short recovery times, and up to 99 years of retention. Stored in geo-replicated storge, maintaining 6 copies of data across 2 Azure datacenters with 99.9% service availability.
- Security: Leverage advanced analytics and threat intelligence to detect attacks. Simplify investigation for rapid threat response. Use access and application controls to block malicious activity.
- Cost Savings: Cloud infrastructure offers major cost savings on operating expenses. Cloud customers get all the components and services they need delivered through the cloud, rather than creating, building, managing, and maintaining a data center. This saves huge amounts of spending on energy bills, IT expertise, hardware, servers, and software that accompany a physical data center. Instead, cloud infrastructure enables businesses to pay for only the data storage and computing power they need as and when they require it.
- Agility and flexibility: Cloud infrastructures are highly agile and flexible because they are self-managed and allow service changes to be made in a matter of minutes. This increases uptime and makes business systems efficient, enabling users to access shared data through mobile or Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices as necessary. As a result, organizations become more focused on business and issues that drive the bottom line than being bogged down in IT matters.
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As a Microsoft Gold Partner, Alliance Business Technologies prioritises continually honing our expertise in Microsoft technologies. We have consistently developed new Microsoft offerings before our competitors in order to help clients modernise and secure their IT departments—and in turn, to help ensure their success in the era of remote work.
- Gold Microsoft Partner
- Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) - Managed Service Provider Partner Program (MSP3)
- Quality Management ISO 9001:2008 Certified
- GITC Accreditation: Member No.: Q-2645
If you would like to know more on how we can digitally transform your business, don’t hesitate to contact us today.
