To build a competitive advantage, modern businesses can enhance their efficiency, responsiveness, and competitiveness by utilizing enterprise technology specifically designed to tackle the scalability, security, integration, and regulatory compliance challenges that large organizations face.

A well-defined cloud strategy helps IT infrastructure become more agile and responsive to market changes while achieving business goals and improving organizational capabilities. Before migrating to the cloud, it is essential to carefully analyze the organization’s current IT infrastructure, applications, and business processes, which will help determine whether a move to the cloud is feasible and what benefits it may offer. Creating a roadmap that outlines the order of migration, priorities, and milestones is also essential.

An organization should consider its specific requirements, data sensitivity, and regulatory compliance when choosing a cloud deployment model, and it is also vital to pick cloud service providers that align with its budget and long-term objectives. Deciding which applications and workloads to transfer to the cloud and selecting the best migration strategy are critical steps. Additionally, it is necessary to implement effective cloud cost management practices to monitor, regulate, and optimize cloud expenses. Governance policies, processes, and procedures can help manage cloud resources, ensure compliance, and maintain operational efficiency.

One such example of a company successfully migrating to the cloud involved a prominent US healthcare network providing services to more than 750,000 doctors, 105,000 dentists, 60,000 pharmacies, 5,000 hospitals, six hundred vendors, 450 labs, and 1,200 government and commercial payers. They have established solid relationships with various private and public payers, providers, and pharmacies for the last three decades. Recently, the customer opted to migrate a sizable portion of its applications to Amazon Web Services, starting with Total Claims, Capture & Control (TC³). TC³ is a claims management solution that merges internal claim management systems with external loss control programs. To aid the transition, Innova Solutions collaborated with the customer to design an infrastructure-as-code framework that automatically sets up all application components in the five required environments using cloud formation templates. Additionally, Innova created chef cookbooks to manage configuration tasks and integrated the customer’s preferred toolset, which includes Microsoft Team Foundation Server, Octopus Deploy, and RunDeck.

Integrating cloud services with other systems requires proper planning, whether on-premises or in the cloud. Providing IT teams with training opportunities and skill development can ensure these systems run smoothly. Regularly reviewing and updating your cloud strategy is crucial to ensuring that it aligns with your evolving business needs, integrates modern technologies, and adheres to industry best practices. A successful cloud strategy should consider your organization’s specific challenges and opportunities, which involve working with IT leaders, business stakeholders, and experienced cloud consultants.

A company’s infrastructure enterprise technology is the hardware, software, networks, and data centers that support the organization’s overall operations and functions, all essential components of its IT framework. The infrastructure enterprise technology is the backbone of an IT environment and enables applications, services, and data to be efficiently managed, processed, and delivered. The components and aspects of infrastructure enterprise technology include hardware and servers, networking and connectivity, data centers, cloud computing, virtualization and containers, storage and data management, security, and compliance, monitoring and management tools, disaster recovery and business continuity, edge computing, green IT and sustainability, and network function virtualization (NFV). Hardware and servers are the physical components supporting the IT infrastructure, including servers, storage devices, and other equipment. Networking and connectivity enable communication and data transfer between devices and systems, and data centers house the organization’s IT infrastructure and support the management and processing of data. Furthermore, virtualization and containers allow an organization to create several virtual environments on a single physical server, and storage and data management involve organizing and managing data within an organization. Security and compliance ensure that an organization’s IT environment is secure and follows industry regulations, and monitoring and management tools help to manage and maintain IT infrastructure. Disaster recovery and business continuity ensure an organization can continue operations during a disaster. With edge computing, a company’s IT infrastructure has a lower environmental impact since data can be processed closer to the source, reducing latency. With network function virtualization (NFV), network functions can be virtualized, enabling organizations to manage their networks more efficiently. Enterprise technology design and management are crucial to an organization’s IT environment’s reliability, scalability, security, and performance. In addition to industry trends and best practices, the choice of infrastructure components and technologies depends on the enterprise’s specific needs and goals.

Before transitioning to the cloud, it is important to understand cloud migration enterprise tech, which involves moving your IT resources, applications, data, and workloads from on-premises infrastructure to cloud-based environments. Your enterprise can benefit from scalability, flexibility, cost-efficiency, and agility. To make the transition with minimal disruption to business operations, careful planning, execution, and optimization are crucial. When transitioning to the cloud, it is vital to consider several critical factors. First, it is essential to evaluate and strategize your goals. Following that, you should examine your applications and transfer your data. In addition, you should consider your network, security, and regulatory compliance and conduct a thorough test to ensure that everything works as it should after completing all these steps. Once the migration process is complete, you must optimize your system. Always provide team training and support and establish backup and disaster recovery plans. Lastly, continuously improve your system over time. Collaborating with seasoned consultants and utilizing suitable migration tools and services can significantly simplify the process of migrating to the cloud. An effective transition to the cloud can be completed with meticulous planning, proficiency, and a comprehensive understanding of your current on-premises infrastructure and the cloud platform you intend to use.

Innova Solutions has experience in guiding clients through successful cloud migration journeys. For example, our team helped a major telecommunications company in Mexico migrate a large set of applications to the cloud while keeping costs low. Each application’s dependencies had to be considered carefully since migrating one could potentially affect others, and we had to minimize the impact of migration on multiple business units. By offering a low-cost, high-availability solution, we were able to reduce the customer’s hardware costs resulting from their own server and network maintenance. We also aimed to improve the reliability and availability of services with better failover design and a seamless migration path with minimal impact on users. Our solution focused on cost management and minimizing disruption to the sales network applications. We were able to leverage Oracle Cloud services due to the current Oracle-based application structure, which provided supporting tools for migration and licensing discounts. Using Kubernetes to contain the application and services layers, our hybrid approach ensured extreme portability, so they were not locked into a vendor or virtual machine (VM) for cloud services. To quickly ingest and run shared data in parallel to validate the migration for testing, we utilized accelerators such as the Data Fabric to integrate applications. Our expertise allowed us to assist the client in a successful cloud migration journey while keeping costs low and minimizing disruption to their business units.

By utilizing managed cloud technology, enterprises can focus on their core business activities and strategic initiatives while avoiding the operational complexities of managing a cloud environment. Third-party managed service providers (MSPs) can oversee outsourcing, monitoring, managing, and maintaining cloud infrastructure and services on behalf of the enterprise. There are several advantages to utilizing managed cloud services, such as boosted performance, decreased operational workload, heightened security, and the ability to access specialized knowledge. Managed cloud technology for businesses includes managing infrastructure, applications, performance optimization, security and compliance, disaster recovery, scaling and resources, cost management, 24/7 support, consultations, migration and onboarding, vendor management, and monitoring and reporting. Organizations can customize the services to meet their specific requirements, choosing the level of control and support they need. Selecting a reliable and experienced managed service provider that aligns with the organization’s goals, industry requirements, and technical environment is vital, enabling businesses to leverage cloud technology’s advantages while delegating operational responsibilities to a dependable partner.

At Innova Solutions, we have experience providing managed cloud services to various businesses. Our clientele includes a healthcare network that has operated for over 30 years, connecting multiple private and government payers, claim-submitting providers, and pharmacies. The client required our assistance migrating a complex, on-premises application built on the Microsoft stack to the cloud to reduce costs and improve manageability. Due to interrelated component services, the application had become increasingly complicated to deploy and manage. Additionally, the client wanted to modernize their DevOps practices and tools, but their team lacked experience in this area. We provided a fully automated solution that included Infrastructure-as-Code for resource provisioning, configuration management, and application deployment. Our solution also featured drift management and was fully integrated into the client’s Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline.

In recent years, cloud-native applications have transformed enterprise technology using cloud computing capabilities and modern, scalable, and modular architecture principles. These innovative applications possess remarkable features like microservices architecture, containerization, orchestration, DevOps practices, elasticity, scalability, resilience, and API-first design. Enterprises can reap numerous benefits by integrating cloud-native apps into their operations. These include enhanced agility and speed, cost efficiency, scalability, stability, availability, innovation, experimentation, vendor neutrality, and an improved user experience. To fully benefit from the advantages of enterprise technology, it is crucial to approach its implementation with careful planning, a shift in mindset, and the appropriate skill set.

Combining cloud edge and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies has opened new business prospects in different industries. Cloud Edge employs cloud computing and edge computing infrastructure to process data closer to its source, facilitating real-time processing and data analytics. Additionally, Cloud Edge reduces latency, optimizes bandwidth usage, allows offline capabilities, and enhances security. IoT, conversely, refers to a network of interconnected devices and objects that gather, exchange, and analyze data. The insights from IoT data can optimize processes, predict maintenance needs, personalize customer experiences, remotely monitor and control devices, and improve energy efficiency. By combining Cloud Edge and IoT technologies, businesses can process IoT data in real-time at the edge and integrate seamlessly with cloud-based analytics platforms, unlocking new levels of efficiency, innovation, and competitiveness for companies. However, planning and implementing Cloud Edge and IoT solutions carefully is crucial to address security, scalability, and integration challenges.

Innova Solutions has been a leading industry player for over 25 years, providing reliable support for enterprises through cloud-based technology. To learn how to leverage Innova’s digital solutions for your business, please email [email protected]. For more information about our other Hi-Tech solutions, please visit Hi-Tech Industry Solutions – Innova Solutions. To view the case studies mentioned in this article or other projects that Innova Solutions has worked on, please visit Digital Transformation – Case Studies – Innova Solutions.

Key Contributor: Varun Yeturi – Technical Writer