5 Tips to Successfully Plan for IT Modernization
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Understand and Address Vulnerabilities
If a CIO or IT leader decides that they need to introduce new applications, technologies or processes into the organization, it's important for them to understand any potential vulnerabilities that may be introduced with the changes before they are implemented. This typically requires an audit of not only security processes and data governance, but also a careful look at the data lifecycle to ensure that the data is always available and recoverable under any failure scenario. Modern data centers are being built in the model that has been popularized by the hyper-scale service providers. These platforms are now becoming more common in the enterprise to improve system availability and to dramatically lower costs.
This model deploys advanced software that runs on commodity compute infrastructure in a distributed fashion. Because the software is completely independent of the hardware, it delivers higher overall resilience, fault tolerance and system availability than even the most expensive enterprise class infrastructure. Data protection and recovery is also a critical vulnerability that requires modern approaches. No longer is a backup window appropriate, but rather organizations must be able to recover data quickly and with recovery point objectives (RPOs) approaching zero to ensure that if data recovery is needed, the amount of data lost is minimized to protect the business.
Today's IT leaders are not the same as yesterday’s. As more economic activity continues to take place digitally, IT departments are faced with more challenges every day. Not only are CIOs and IT decision makers being tasked to take on a multitude of ambitious strategies to transform the digital enterprise, but they are also expected to execute against their everyday demands – overseeing company computer operations; supervising information system and communications networks; and addressing policies, governance, compliance and security, just to name a few.
One strategy that will help drive real business growth and strategy across multiple departments, and free up the IT department to focus on the bigger picture, is IT modernization. And it's something that a lot of enterprises are considering – in fact, 70 percent of enterprises consider data center and application modernization a top priority for their business.
In this slideshow, Mark Lewis, CEO of Formation Data Systems, distills the top five things IT leaders should prioritize in order to make IT modernization a reality. The key to successful IT modernization includes proper planning, alignment with current and future goals and objectives, understanding vulnerabilities, and finding the right partner in order to facilitate implementation.
Related Topics : A Big Market for Big Data Jobs, Midmarket CIO, IT Management Automation, SharePoint, Technology Markets
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