The private cloud (on-premise data centre) has long been the foundation of many IT estates – hosting applications, data, networking and even telephony and making IT services available across the entire organisation.
Physically the private cloud can consist of anything from a single server room to full Tier 4 sites. However, it is inside the data centre that has seen significant evolution and modernisation over the last few years as organisations have sought to consolidate their IT estates, while accelerating their digital transformation plans against a backdrop of more demanding user populations and the constant demand to drive efficiencies.
For many of our customers, this has meant moving beyond the traditional three-tier converged infrastructure (CI) and adopting new solutions utilising the software defined data centre (SDDC) and hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI).
These technologies have fundamentally changed the relationship between compute, storage and networking hardware in the data centre, through a combination of virtualisation technology and unified management. Virtualisation allows these hardware elements to be provisioned as pooled resources and the unified management layer enables these resources to be organised and seamlessly provisioned to host workloads. SDDC and HCI technologies both deliver integrated high-performance virtualisation solutions, capable of delivering greater flexibility and scalability over traditional three-tier, along with options for built-in automation, orchestration and simplified management.
A recent addition to the modern data centre is Microsoft’s Azure Stack HCI, built on a new operating system and delivered as an Azure service to offer the performance of a hyper-converged infrastructure with the innovation and benefits of Azure integration. An Azure Stack HCI solution sits in your data centre or remote sites and is provisioned through the Azure cloud platform, providing familiar Azure management tools and access to Azure cloud services on-premise, all delivered on your existing Azure subscription.
Each of these technologies has its preferred use cases, and as a solutions partner working closely with the leading vendors in this space, such as Microsoft, Dell Technologies and VMware, Phoenix are expertly placed to guide you and help realise the right solution for your organisation.
The software defined data centre (SDDC) can take advantage of the hybrid cloud model, extending your on-premise infrastructure – or private cloud – and enabling you to host applications, data and services on a public cloud platform such as Microsoft Azure or AWS.
Organisations are choosing the hybrid cloud model to drive more value from their existing infrastructure, using technologies such as VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and Azure VMware Solution (AVS) to extend their data centre and take advantage of the flexibility offered by more deployment options and advanced features around security and compliance.
Adopting a hybrid cloud approach enables your organisation to seamlessly scale up to meet short term peaks in demand without additional capital expenditure, by only paying for what you use.
Hybrid cloud provides the flexibility to run some workloads in the public cloud, while utilising your on-premise technology investment and providing simplified management across your entire hybrid estate.
It is important to remember that with all modern data centre deployments, including hybrid cloud, there is no one size fits all approach. Organisations have different requirements when it comes to developing and maintaining their IT services, their security and regulatory obligations and how they operate their IT budgets.
With our consultative approach, Phoenix are skilled and experienced in helping our customers achieve the right solution for them, taking advantage of cloud services where it makes sense to do so, and supporting you on your data centre transformation journey.
If you’re looking at data centre transformation, whether as a part of a move to cloud or hybrid cloud, or to modernise and reduce your data centre footprint, you need to understand your current usage.
The free of charge Phoenix Explorer Assessment helps to put learnings about your infrastructure in the context of your business strategy, providing guidance on what technologies could be the right fit for your organisation in order to move your infrastructure forwards.
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If you think that the cloud is for you and want to understand how best to move forwards, Phoenix’s Surveyor 360 Assessment Services can help you plan your journey.
Designed to assist you gain clarity of your existing infrastructure through the use of explorer tools and detailed analysis, it can determine the suitability of your different workloads for cloud migration, while providing guidance around benefits, strategy and costs.
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For customers just starting out on their cloud journey, and those who wish to gain a deeper understanding of Microsoft Azure, the Phoenix Azure Fundamentals programme provides a hands-on approach to understanding this cloud-based architecture and its benefits.
The service includes a high-level design session, Azure PoC and a review and recommendations report based on your workloads, to help give you a clear roadmap for moving forward with Microsoft Azure.
Learn morePhoenix enables digital transformation in the workplace, empowering UK organisations to innovate and transform with cloud and hybrid infrastructures data, AI, security, and collaboration tools. By understanding the individual goals of its customers, Phoenix delivers remarkable, outcome-focused IT solutions and services that allow UK organisations to make a difference to the lives of their employees, service users, and communities.
Phoenix is a signatory on the Race at Work Charter, and a Disability Confident and Living Wage employer. The company is also actively involved in encouraging more women into the IT industry.
