Executive Roundtable: On-Prem Modernization Requires as Much Attention -- and Investment -- as Cloud Migration Initiatives
By Lane F. Cooper, Editorial Director, BizTechReports and Contributing Editor, CIO.com
There is a growing appreciation among enterprise technology leaders of the increasingly dynamic relationship between various cloud resources and on-prem computing capacity. As a result, hybrid, multi-cloud infrastructures are no longer seen as an interim step toward an all-cloud future. Instead, most large and established organizations view heterogeneous computing environments as a permanent architecture that will be critical for optimizing the long-term technological and financial performance of enterprise infrastructures.
This was a central conclusion of a recent CIO.com executive roundtable session that featured participation from over a dozen senior IT and security executives across a range of vertical industries that was co-hosted by Susan Shumway and Don Spangler from IBM.
Susan Shumway and Don Spangler from IBM
Over the course of the conversation, executives that had launched comprehensive business transformation initiatives five or more years ago observed an interesting phenomenon. While many -- if not most -- workloads that have moved off (sometimes aging) data centers in recent years have found a proper, technically effective and cost-efficient home across various public cloud service providers, many important applications were returning to on-prem resources for a variety of reasons.
This boomerang effect sometimes results from changing corporate financial or macroeconomic developments that have altered the efficacy of running specific applications in cloud environments. In others, constantly evolving business transformation initiatives have created requirements for bringing data and applications back in-house to achieve technical and operational optimization objectives. For instance:
* One participant pointed out the need to keep data and applications portable to avoid the vendor lock-in, relating how he repatriated workloads from a major public cloud service provider after being confronted with what he considered a significant -- and unjustifiable -- fee increase.
* Another executive in the manufacturing industry observed that low-latency requirements for many applications require essential infrastructure elements to be located close to their operating environment.
* A third leader in the financial services sector noted how corporate actions -- specifically mergers and acquisitions -- prompted his organization to maintain a robust on-prem capability to absorb unexpected legacy technologies that must be integrated into newly converged organizations.
It is in this context that the importance of data and application portability in general -- and containerization in particular -- emerged as a central strategy for managing these scenarios. A robust discussion ensued about the imperative of establishing competencies that enable organizations to dynamically move workloads from CSPs to on-prem resources and back again. It is a reality that, many agreed, will characterize enterprise technology management for the foreseeable future.
Sustainability Emerges as Core IT Priority
Sustainability issues were also discussed in considerable detail. More than half of the participants stated that major green-IT initiatives are either currently in place or pending deployment and execution. These most prevalent initiatives shared tended to focus on reducing energy consumption, carbon emissions and the environmental impact of e-waste.
Corporate data centers are often one of the biggest causes of carbon emissions in non-manufacturing or transportation organizations. Consequently, there is a growing recognition that simply moving workloads to the cloud will not absolve -- or shift -- organizational responsibility for achieving sustainability objectives.
One banking executive noted that environmental, social and governance (ESG) had become a serious and central element of her institution's overall culture and mission. She pointed out the importance of clearly understanding how cloud migration affects Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 implications.
[As a quick review: Scope 1 encompasses direct emissions from owned (or controlled) sources like company vehicles and manufacturing facilities, etc.; Scope 2 includes indirect emissions from the generation of purchased electricity, steam, heating, and cooling; Scope 3 is a very broad category that includes all "other" indirect emissions like business travel, investments, end-of-life treatment of sold products, and purchased goods and services (among others), More on this here: https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/esg/carbon-accounting/.]
As a result, outsourcing infrastructure to the cloud does not -- a priori -- reduce enterprise emissions tracked by a growing number of national and international regulators.
Achieving Investment Parity Across On-Prem and Cloud Migration Initiatives
Compared to cloud migration initiatives, most executives admitted their organizations had yet to modernize their on-prem environments with the same level of executive enthusiasm, board attention or funding.
As one executive noted, the main priority when it comes to data center strategies appears to revolve around data-center shut-downs. Many noted, in many cases with pride, the number of data centers that have been closed down since the pandemic.
Others, however, noted that data center rationalization is about much more than simply reducing and removing current x86 inventories. Consolidation of on-prem capacity should also consider current and future performance requirements.
"The objective," noted IBM's Shumway, "should be to reduce the x86 sprawl that can lead to having workloads scattered across an array of servers. In today's virtual environment, this can result in applications spreading everywhere, which is often inefficient from both a sustainability and operational perspective."
It is one of the reasons why a growing number of organizations are exploring alternatives to commodity server platforms -- like x86. The dynamic also explains why the market for mainframe platforms and non-commodity server technology is rising.
According to one recent survey, nearly three-quarters of business and IT executives believe mainframes have long-term viability in their organization; over 90% expect to expand their mainframe footprint significantly. The demand will likely remain strong, especially as artificial intelligence and machine learning emerge as keys to executing next-generation mission-critical applications.
"The case for looking beyond commodity servers is also there to support data center consolidation," explained Spangler from IBM. "For instance, by shifting workloads from a large number of x86 servers to platforms like IBM® LinuxONE or IBM zSystems®, organizations can consolidate while achieving performance and sustainability gains."
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