Companies are becoming increasingly dependent on application performance for long-term success. This dependency on performance can be attributed to companies moving away from their resource- and budget-hungry data centres and reaching for the clouds in their quest for agility, availability and efficiency.
According to Paul Griffiths, technical director at Riverbed Technology, hybrid cloud deployments offer companies the freedom to pick and choose where they deploy the applications that define and serve their business.
The "always on" accessibility and "pay as you go" operating model of public cloud services provide a reliable and cost-effective partnership to go with their on-premises software defined data centre, says Griffiths. Together, the two combine to offer an ideal environment for applications to live and breathe, he adds.
"For the company's end users, the benefits of the hybrid cloud can best be harvested by accessing from wherever they work, with whatever client platform suits them.
"This means using a hybrid network that includes the reliability and performance of traditional MPLS connectivity with the economics and ease of Internet bandwidth whether it is broadband, LTE, satellite or any other medium."
It is crucial to establish baselines for your existing IT infrastructure when moving to a hybrid enterprise, so the right mix is selected, says Griffiths.
"Only by knowing exactly how your business works today can you begin to build a picture of what the right choices will be for keeping some applications on-premises or moving some applications to the cloud (IaaS and SaaS) and when they should be moved.
"It will also provide a clear view of how users can access applications easily, securely and without sacrificing any performance and productivity."
According to Griffiths, a key challenge that needs to be managed is establishing the baselines, and this relies on good communication and collaboration within IT departments.
Any barriers between the teams responsible for servers, applications, security, storage and networking must be torn down, explains Griffiths. "Only then is it really possible to address other challenges that begin with getting a complete and accurate view of the infrastructure. With that view, the challenge of understanding network bandwidth and latency constraints can be overcome."
"Knowing the application performance today, helps to meet the challenge of planning and monitoring the migration of servers and applications for tomorrow, says Griffiths.
This minimises the risk associated with migration projects that otherwise overrun their allocated time, he adds.
He points out once a migration is complete it is important to maintain a centralised, effective and "hybrid-aware" monitoring and control platform.
A platform that can be used by all the IT teams through a common interface yet still provide the reports and diagnostics that are relevant for each team, says Griffiths.
Discover how hybrid enterprises can transform application performance into a competitive advantage through maximising employee productivity and leveraging IT, at the Hybrid Enterprise executive forum, brought to you by Riverbed Technology, in partnership with ITWeb.
Find out how to optimise your application performance at Force for Business South Africa on the 11 November 2015, at Summer Place in Hyde Park.
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