Hyperconnected businesses call for more agile cloud • The Register

Advertorial Businesses worldwide are reinventing themselves to become digital-first. But this is no longer enough in a hyperconnected landscape.

As businesses are increasingly interconnected, the balance between digital transformation and technology agility has never been more critical.

CIOs are under tremendous pressure to strike this balance. In addition to juggling an increasingly distributed workforce and complex IT ecosystems, they are also under strain to ensure secure data exchange and consistency of the customer experience across multiple touchpoints. The interconnectivity between systems and businesses also means IT leaders have additional considerations in data sovereignty, privacy, interoperability, and compliance.

Hybrid cloud: a de-facto standard

This is the reason many businesses are adopting a hybrid cloud approach. According to Flexera, public cloud remains popular in powering digital-first innovation. However, 73 percent of businesses prefer hybrid cloud, as some critical data and apps are deemed too sensitive for the public cloud. With hybrid cloud addressing concerns over lifting and shifting legacy systems without impacting performance or costs, it has become the de-facto standard for many businesses to enjoy greater peace of mind and cloud economies.

While the hybrid cloud is not a new concept, the combination of platforms has made it challenging for IT leaders to achieve optimal application deployment and agility in workloads and data movement. Having a technology strategy that right-fits, right-sizes, and right-locates infrastructure investments in hybrid cloud will be the key for enterprises to keep pace with today’s fast-evolving business landscape.

Empowering AI, XaaS, and data governance

As workflows and business requirements evolve, CIOs are turning to future-fit cloud architecture to smoothen the transition to the following digital initiatives.

– Adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI): Adopting AI used to take years, but out-of-the-box AI models enable swifter deployment. This compels CIOs to stay ahead of AI developments while juggling the escalating amount of data and computational resources required in generative AI.

– Everything-as-a-service (XaaS): A survey by Equinix revealed that 81 percent of APAC IT leaders embrace XaaS to increase agility and overcome complexity. Indeed, businesses are increasingly adopting subscription models to cope with global supply chain constraints that impede hardware procurement. Gartner also highlighted as-a-service models as one of the top trends shaping the future of cloud and edge infrastructure.

– Data and governance: Inadequate data governance can significantly undermine data quality, costing companies an average of US$12.9 million annually. In fact, many find that when data cannot be harnessed effectively, it causes more liability, leading to increased compliance and regulatory risks. This is particularly true among hyperconnected businesses, where data is created and shared across a complex business/IT ecosystem.

With hybrid cloud, CIOs can access low-cost and high-performance computing resources through public clouds and address the data security and compliance concerns with private clouds.

For example, a hybrid cloud can empower AI adoption by crunching production data in the cloud, while keeping critical/sensitive data and workloads on-premises.

Businesses can enjoy even greater provisioning speed and agility when the hybrid cloud is deployed via a cloud-adjacent architecture. It allows the right data and workloads to be processed at the right cloud at the right time, while maximizing access to public cloud services.

IoT, which requires a large amount of data movement between the edge and the cloud, is another driver for the adoption of hybrid cloud. It improves the performance of distributed and interconnected applications, resulting in more secure and efficient IoT operations.

Embracing agility with a future-fit cloud infrastructure

Equinix and Telstra International have partnered to offer Telstra Hybrid Cloud, a fully-managed, single-tenanted hybrid cloud deployment with rapid provisioning via Infrastructure as Code. It is powered by Equinix Metal, an automated interconnected and low-latency Bare Metal as a Service, which delivers fast, flexible and secure interconnected global infrastructure at software speed. It also features professional technology and consulting services from Telstra Purple.

Delivering the combined benefits of private and public clouds, the Telstra Hybrid Cloud ensures a secure, always-on, enterprise-grade and future-fit digital infrastructure that accelerates complex cloud migrations, while isolating and protecting sensitive workloads.

– Eliminate high upfront CAPEX by offering dedicated hardware and flexible contract periods with predictable subscription-based billing.

– Enable rapid cloud provision via infrastructure as code, with an integrated, flexible and secure cloud environment backed by high-speed global connectivity.

– Empower real-time, scalable data processing on public cloud, while storing and executing analytical processes of sensitive data on the private cloud; enable flexibility in managing large data volumes, while ensuring robust security during data exchange.

– Manage data closer to its source and reduce the bandwidth required for edge computing; empower more responsive decision-making for personalized customer interactions.

– Facilitate compliance with greater control over data location and movement.

Delivering hybrid cloud with ease

Equinix and Telstra International’s long-standing partnership empowers enterprises with greater agility in the migration and deployment of complex cloud environments.

– Managed and dedicated infrastructure: Support journey towards multicloud with a fully managed and dedicated hybrid cloud deployment via Telstra Hybrid Cloud and Equinix Metal, which automates the deployment of interconnected bare metal infrastructure in minutes across 25+ global locations. Offer single tenancy to isolate sensitive workloads and access hardware-level security protocols. Seamlessly integrated with Equinix Fabric to connect distributed infrastructure globally via software-defined interconnection. End-to-end managed cloud services by Telstra Purple optimize workloads from the cloud to the edge, including updating, patching, 24×7 proactive monitoring of network, security, and other infrastructure components.

– Speed of deployment: Accelerate migration and deployment of cloud environments by provisioning on-demand infrastructure and connectivity in minutes via Equinix Metal. Roll out new apps and services globally with high-performance computing anytime, anywhere. Enjoy further flexibility and ease in purchasing, managing and navigating your cloud environment across the globe via Telstra Hybrid Cloud.

– Secured connectivity: Build a future-fit digital infrastructure foundation with a secure cloud environment via a dedicated, single-tenanted infrastructure hosted in Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX) data centers to ensure data sovereignty. Sharpen your security posture with Telstra International’s advanced managed network and security capabilities, including threat monitoring and management services.

Contact us to discover how the Telstra-Equinix combined technologies, global reach, and industry knowledge can be pivotal in shaping your strategy.

Contributed by Equinix.