After your cloud migration, you’ll still have a data center left behind. Part of your cloud planning should consider how cloud will impact that data center and how you will adjust to those changes. Impacts to consider include:
Management and operations.
Many personnel will need to be retrained to manage cloud resources, rather than on premises resources. To make it easier to keep an eye on both cloud and data center, look for new tools that can provide a consolidated view over all resources. In addition, all future planning needs to decide which workloads belong in cloud and which should be on premises. Businesses should develop standard guidelines that consider factors such as security, resiliency, and performance, among others, to have a standard that guides that decision-making. High levels of automation are required to ensure policies are deployed consistently and completely across all cloud and internal systems.
Energy efficiency.
With resources moved from the data center to the cloud, the efficiency of the facility and the remaining equipment is likely to decrease. There is an opportunity to consolidate both physical space and hardware, increasing efficiency while decreasing costs.
Architecture.
The drive for IT architecture has been standardization, minimizing variation to ease support. Cloud is often an extension of that, and cloud is also often the place for experimenting with new technology. With reductions in data center staff, standardizing in the data center continues to be a reasonable goal. It may not be realistic, however. As cloud takes on more and more of a business’s IT, the systems left behind in the data center are likely to be the nonstandard systems that aren’t a good fit for the cloud.
Emphasis on decommissioning.
Rather than spending hours deciding where to place new equipment, data center teams will devote their time to decommissioning equipment that isn’t needed because workloads were moved to the cloud. Leaving that equipment in place creates security risks and places a maintenance burden on the support team, as well as creating costs due to their ongoing power draw. In addition to decommissioning equipment that’s not needed, teams can devote more time to decommissioning and upgrading equipment that’s still needed but outdated.
Reduced budgets.
As IT resources move to the cloud, budget resources will move along with them. Data centers will need to figure out how to deliver their remaining responsibilities with a smaller budget.
Reskilling staff.
Staff will need training so they’re able to effectively support resources in the cloud as well as in the data center. The budget for staff is likely to reduce with the shift to the cloud, and remaining staff will need to develop flexibility to provide support across multiple areas.
Develop an effective cloud migration plan that accounts for the on-premises impact with support from VAST IT Services. Contact us to learn how our services provide support wherever your resources are deployed.
