Hybrid IT infrastructures & cascade effects

The ‘cascade effects’ threatening hybrid IT infrastructures

The influence of digital business, cloud computing, and hybrid IT infrastructures has created significant potential ‘cascade effects’ that infrastructure and operations leaders need to pre-empt and plan for.  
 
Hybrid IT infrastructures use a mix of on-premises data centers, private clouds, and public clouds in different locations and are now the norm for many companies. A company may host a public-facing asset like an app on the public cloud but opt to store sensitive data, like user info, or ‘mission-critical’ business information on a private cloud infrastructure for better security. What’s more, almost all companies, 92%, then use a multi-vendor approach for the infrastructure within their data centers.  
 
A hybrid solution like this gives companies finer control over their IT infrastructure. Hybrid IT infrastructures provide the scalability of the public cloud, enabling increases in operational capacity during demand spikes. Then, sensitive or business-critical data and operations can be stored in a private cloud or by using an on-premises data center. The results are: a secure environment, with the option to scale up seamlessly, and the lower costs that come with storing non ‘mission-critical’ data on the public cloud or local data centers.  
 
But as the popularity of hybrid solutions rises, traditional processes and disaster recovery solutions used by infrastructure and operations managers may no longer apply. 

“Traditional I&O tools are quickly reaching their limits when tasked with such a wide array of data-processing venues.” 

says Ross Winser, Gartner Senior Director Analyst. 

Furthermore, as companies undergo digital transformations that start out life with a hybrid infrastructure, this lack of legacy planning and forethought reveals potential operational vulnerabilities that need to be planned for.  
 
The result is that companies are estimated to have spent $1.2 trillion on digital transformation efforts in 2019, yet only 13% of leaders say their organizations are ready for the digital age. 

Infrastructure and operations leaders need to plan for unexpected ‘cascade effects’. Unforeseen chains of events that affect systems in a ‘domino effect’, where problems can lead to bigger problems.   

Here are some of these ‘cascade effects’ that must be tackled by I&O leaders as businesses move evermore towards hybrid IT infrastructures.  

Managing a hybrid IT infrastructure  

A hybrid infrastructure naturally creates silos of visibility and communications as business data and information are stored in different locations and with varying levels of access.   
 
Third-party vendors are creating solutions to solve these issues. However, new tools are not always comprehensive, fast, or accessible enough to solve every challenge encountered in hybrid digital infrastructure management. This means companies can’t rely on this as a solution.   
 
I&O leaders must forecast the gaps they have between sets of data. Failing to understand where these ‘silos’ exist may lead to problems with the protection and management of data and sensitive material such as user information across their infrastructure.   

Distributed infrastructure, distributed data

With a hybrid IT infrastructure, IT resources can be located where the business use case demands it. This has its advantages, but it also means that the data contained in these systems is distributed along with the infrastructure.  
 
In fact, by 2022, more than 50% of enterprise data will be processed outside the data center or cloud. In 2019, this figure was just 10%.   

When designing or inheriting a hybrid IT solution, I&O leaders will need to conduct impact assessments to identify where data is being stored, how it will be consumed, and their ability to protect and manage it as it grows — both in terms of volume and the physical distribution of the infrastructure.  
 
I&O leaders must plan for data impacts across a hybrid system. As data is increasingly distributed, I&O teams can struggle to provide the protection, management, and security needed. As the volume of data and level of distribution grows, these risks (unless managed) will grow in line with the development. 

The pros and cons of a distributed cloud model

As businesses undergo a digital transformation, more and more operations are being moved to the cloud. Public cloud services can be made available in different physical locations while the originating public cloud provider remains in control of their operation. This is known as a distributed cloud model and is becoming an increasing part of hybrid IT infrastructures.  
 
Distributed models are likely to appeal to organizations that have been previously hampered by the physical location of their cloud services. They help companies comply with data regulations in multiple regions and mitigate the risks of network outages.  
 
“Multi-cloud computing lowers the risk of cloud provider lock-in, and can provide service resiliency and migration opportunities, in addition to the core cloud benefits of agility, scalability and elasticity.” said Santhosh Rao, a Senior Director Analyst speaking in Gartner. 
 
The benefits can seem worthwhile but “Day 2” considerations such as the hardware lifecycles involved, SLAs, and the real-world ability of distributed cloud providers to meet them can present I&O leaders with these ‘cascade issues’.   
 
I&O leaders need to accurately measure and simulate these challenges across a distributed model and decide if a distributed cloud system offers enough added value to justify these operational challenges.  

New crisis recovery strategies 

With any system, it’s advisable to hope for the best, but plan for the worst. In the worst-case scenario that there is a catastrophic interruption and primary channels get disconnected, I&O managers need to build out circuits that can re-establish communications channels. They need established methods and procedures to return the data center to full operation and recover data that was lost during the event. 
 
But, with a hybrid infrastructure, I&O professionals must plan for the fact that if a disaster strikes, legacy recovery strategies may not be fit for purpose when it comes to their operating policies. The cascading effect for I&O managers is that a major interruption can become an irretrievable loss.  

Hybrid infrastructure disaster recovery strategies must be reimagined to account for workloads in public and private clouds, in traditional data centers, and at the edge. Resilience requirements must be evaluated at the design stage to spot resilience gaps and create fit for purpose recovery strategies.  

Multiple points of contact, multiple points of failure

A centralized single provider will be responsible for the operation, governance, updates, and evolution of all the services. 
 
This multi-provider approach can present management and logistical challenges as well as information silos and communication barriers between services, equipment, and vendors. Enterprises with smaller IT teams may lack expertise in some of the aspects of a hybrid environment. 
 
This can then lead to other issues. It makes it harder for companies to set organization-wide operating goals, as they are beholden to different performance and service agreements. Asset management and lifecycles require meticulous planning. Manual monitoring and management are often not adequate for supporting a hybrid architecture. This can lead to companies needing multiple service agreements, across multiple vendors and services.  
 

Hybrid infrastructures require hybrid services 

Digital transformations that are built around a customer-focused approach mean that hybrid environments, multi-vendor IT services, and third-party maintenance providers are becoming a standard approach to modern IT infrastructure.  
 
Hybrid environments help companies absorb workload surges as demand increases. Companies can insure themselves against loss by duplicating data to the cloud. By distributing their coverage, they will ensure business operations are not interrupted. 
 
But the traditional infrastructure around support and recovery for IT systems doesn’t always apply to a customized system. This leaves the potential for ‘cascade effects’ to threaten infrastructure and operations.   
 
The rise of independent and product-agnostic IT services will help companies optimize these hybrid IT infrastructures, spot critical weaknesses, and put in place contingency and recovery plans across their systems. Independent IT services and hardware providers can offer companies a centralized service that provides a unified, single point of entry for any hybrid infrastructure.