From traditional to modern:

The path to becoming a data-driven company

Digitalization and information technologies have permanently changed the economy and industry and continue to do so. The digital transformation is affecting all areas of the economy. Digital information and functions, automation, standardization and much more often create completely new value chains and business models. However, the digital transformation towards a data-driven company requires us to actively work towards this change.

Agility and flexibility that are difficult to implement

The wishes - not only when it comes to IT infrastructure - revolve primarily around lean, simple, scalable and flexible IT landscapes. They should form the basis for new digital business models, more agile processes and greater efficiency.
For IT departments, this means numerous additional tasks that go beyond administration and require corresponding skills. Against the backdrop of a shortage of IT specialists, companies often lack the capacity to drive forward the desired digital transformation.

One of the dilemmas is that digital strategies work at project level, but cannot be scaled for the entire group. Not only do available resources play a role here, but also regulatory aspects, especially for internationally operating companies.

IT infrastructure as a critical factor

IT infrastructure is crucial for digital business transformation - and for competitiveness in general. A functioning IT environment is the prerequisite for innovation (from new applications to new digital business models), more productive processes, better customer relationships and more sustainable employee retention.

However, the requirements for the IT landscape can vary from company to company. It is therefore necessary to tailor the transformation of the IT infrastructure to the required workloads - for which the various approaches offer some possible solution strategies.

From traditional to modern: A comparison of different IT infrastructure approaches

Flexibility, stability, individuality and performance: the demands placed on modern IT infrastructures are high and continue to grow as digital change progresses. However, this also applies to the range of solutions that companies can draw on when setting up their own IT environment.

Traditional infrastructure

Traditional IT infrastructures with local data centers are still not uncommon in companies, as they have a number of advantages: Companies have complete freedom when it comes to configuring everything from servers and data storage components to the network and software, allowing them to design their IT landscape as an on-premises solution.

On the other hand, the freedom to configure a tailor-made infrastructure means more responsibility and more effort. This applies not only to finances, but also to the administration and management of hardware and software. Traditional data centers therefore require a high level of financial and human resources as well as technical expertise.

For this reason, companies sometimes hold on to outdated technology and miss out on the next step towards digital transformation.

Hyperconverged infrastructure and disaggregated HCI

To enable less complexity and more scalability, hyperconverged infrastructures (HCI) combine all components in a single package. The idea behind convergent systems is similar: companies purchase the infrastructure elements as packages to provide more Overview in the data center.

However, HCI goes one step further and differs from the individual hardware solutions that still use both traditional data centers and convergent structures. Instead, HCI is a software-centric IT architecture that comprises (at least) the following components:

• integrated virtualization (hypervisor),
• virtualized storage (software-defined storage),
• the virtualized network (software-defined networking),
• a control software

This means that one appliance is enough to connect all the key components of the IT infrastructure. The entire infrastructure is located within a system (software-defined data center, SDDC), so to speak, whose various levels are virtualized.
The provision and management of required resources by the software ensures the desired simplification in the hyperconverged infrastructure. Fast and needs-based adjustments to computing and storage performance can be made much more easily.
Due to the reduced complexity, HCI can help companies with their digital business transformation in many ways:

• The infrastructure is basically set up according to the plug-and-play principle. This means that the most important settings have already been made by the provider and the IT department in the company only has to take care of the details. Otherwise, the companies receive a functioning system.
• As an all-in-one solution, the HCI must also be managed in the same way. As there are no longer any independent components as there are in the traditional data center, IT departments must be able to manage the infrastructure as a whole.
• Subsequent adjustments to the IT infrastructure in hyperconverged environments involve less effort and costs than with traditional data centers or convergent systems. An additional node is simply created in the HCI for the desired expansion. IT continues to run as usual until this is fully implemented.

Disaggregated HCI (dHCI) further expands the configurability options because they are based on separate compute and storage nodes. This allows companies to scale their resources even better - independently of each other. As HCI is usually offered as a complete package of compute, storage and network, even if only an expansion of storage space is required, there is more freedom when adapting the infrastructure.

Hyperconverged infrastructures provide companies with a flexible, adaptable basis that is less complex to set up, maintain and operate than traditional data centers. This also applies to the organizational effort, because with HCI, companies only have one provider to contact and do not have to communicate problems or requests with multiple parties.

Composable Infrastructure

"Composable" means that the IT infrastructure can be put together as desired from a variety of components. This approach should enable companies to better scale their IT environment and design it according to their wishes.

These are also software-defined systems in which the necessary resources are bundled on one platform. Physical, virtual and container-based workloads should be able to be implemented quickly with a composable infrastructure.

Cloud computing and hybrid infrastructure approaches

Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - in principle, anything as a Service (XaaS) is possible with cloud computing.

For this reason, many companies are pursuing a cloud strategy, especially as there are now hybrid cloud approaches alongside public cloud and private cloud, which integrate existing IT infrastructures or partially public cloud-capable workloads with public cloud workloads in a shared monitoring and management system.

Ultimately, the key question is what requirements the respective workloads place on the IT environment and how these can best be taken into account at the infrastructure level. With HCI, for example, the way is clear not only for edge computing, but also for setting up a hybrid cloud. For digital business transformation, it remains essential to examine the possibilities of IT infrastructure types.

Standardized and flexible: HCI environments with Azure Stack

Security, compliance and the greatest possible flexibility are among the most important aspects when it comes to setting up and operating IT infrastructures. This means, for example, that the IT environment can be tailored to different use cases and adapted to individual requirements.

There is also the efficiency factor: performance and scalability should go hand in hand. With Azure Stack HCI, Microsoft provides a powerful hyperconverged infrastructure for numerous areas of application.

All possibilities with Azure Stack HCI

Microsoft Azure Stack HCI is a hyperconverged infrastructure that hosts virtualized Linux and Windows workloads locally. These are operated on on-premises hardware.

At the same time, Azure Stack HCI creates a hybrid cloud environment that makes additional services available to companies. These include backup, recovery, monitoring and update management services, for example.

This allows both the advantages of edge and cloud computing to be combined in a single solution. In this way, resource management can be standardized, while the architecture connected to the cloud ensures flexibility at the same time.

The Azure Stack HCI solution comprises the following components:

• the Azure Stack HCI operating system,
• the tested hardware of an OEM partner,
• the Azure hybrid services,
• the Windows Admin Center,
• Hyper-V based computer resources,
• virtualized storage (which is based on direct storage locations) and
• an optional SDN-based virtualized network with network controller.

Powerful and scalable virtualization thanks to clusters

Azure Stack HCI and Windows Admin Center make it possible to set up an easy-to-manage hyperconverged cluster. This can be stretched across multiple locations, which minimizes infrastructure costs for branch office workloads or edge computing solutions.

Overall, the hyperconverged infrastructure of Azure Stack offers a wide range of options for adapting a company's IT infrastructure to various requirements and use cases. In addition to the already mentioned scenarios in the area of branch workloads and edge, these include, for example

• Based on the Azure Stack HCI cluster, a versatile VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is possible, which improves the protection of user data through the use of central storage and increased security precautions. The VDI platform can also be used to support local Azure Virtual Desktop instances.
• Azure Stack HCI also provides high-performance SQL Server instances, creating more resilience for mission-critical databases. The SQL servers can be run on virtual machines (VMs) to consolidate multiple database workloads. The ability to integrate the SQL servers with Azure Site Recovery also provides organizations with a reliable, cloud-based solution for data migration, recovery and protection.
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) expands the possibilities of the IT infrastructure by hosting container-based deployments. This means denser workloads and more efficient use of resources.

Even old virtualization hosts and data centers can be updated and consolidated with Azure Stack HCI. Standardized tools and interfaces simplify operational and system management while ensuring better scalability.

This makes Azure Stack HCI a good example of how hyperconverged IT infrastructures can help companies with their digital business transformation: By delivering hybrid environments with numerous capabilities that can be customized to meet specific business needs.