How to Optimize IT Infrastructure

Optimizing infrastructure is crucial for companies’ growth as it can prevent service disruption, maximize performance and save cost. However, choosing the right approach can be a challenging task. In this article, you will learn about best practices of infrastructure optimization and essential steps for its implementation.

Tree Key Strategy To Optimize It Infrastructure

Before you get started, you should determine what you want to improve and choose the method to stick to. There are tree main strategies to optimize IT infrastructure. Let’s dive deeper into each of them.

Optimizing On-Premise Infrastructure

On-premises infrastructure optimization involves improving the existing physical IT environment on your organization’s premises. Typically, to optimize the on-premises infrastructure, companies pick to reduce the number of machines in their data centers, reduce the number of processors, choose less powerful processors, or reduce the amount of storage.

Although this method offers significant cost savings, you should be prepared for a decrease in system performance and decreased flexibility.

Optimizing Cloud Infrastructure

Cloud infrastructure is quite common these days, but for its efficient operation, it is crucial to allocate the right resources to the right workload or application.

Cloud solutions are quite flexible and allow you to prepare a model that fits your specific business requirements. You can deploy a solution that uses the cloud on demand or easily increase its capacity as needed. 

Migration from On-Premise to the Cloud

Migrating from on-premise to cloud optimization offers organizations a plethora of benefits, from scalability and flexibility to cost-efficiency and access to advanced cloud services. 

However, in order to reap all the benefits of cloud migration, you need to carefully develop a strategy and take into account all potential risks. To minimize all possible issues, you may need the help of cloud services providers. Their knowledge and long-standing expertise will make migration fast and painless for your business.

Steps for IT Infrastructure Optimization

IT infrastructure optimization includes three key steps. Whether you’re performing on-premise optimization or working with the cloud, the process is quite similar.

Audit 

Before embarking on the journey of transformation, it is essential to understand the potential outcomes and ramifications of your actions. During the audit phase, you must meticulously identify compelling reasons justifying the need for infrastructure optimization. It’s imperative to evaluate the potential consequences and to gain insights into how your optimized infrastructure will perform over the long haul. To achieve this, you must conduct thorough audits for both on-premise and cloud infrastructures.

On-premise optimization

For an on-premise audit, success hinges on your profound understanding of your existing system. This includes quantifying the number of machines in your data center, evaluating the system’s memory capacity, and deciphering the actual resource requirements.

Cloud optimization

In the context of cloud auditing, the process is slightly different but equally crucial. It necessitates a thorough comprehension of the resources at your disposal and the utilization patterns.

Executing an exhaustive audit of your current infrastructure requires a team of experts. For cloud environments, DevOps experts are instrumental, while administrators are pivotal for on-premise solutions.

Planning

Once the analysis is complete, and it becomes unequivocally clear that infrastructure optimization is necessary, the planning phase commences. During this stage, your team collaboratively decides on the optimal approach to align with your business needs.

On-premise optimization

For on-premise infrastructure optimization, the planning revolves around making decisions that reduce the number of computer systems, adjust processor capacities, or fine-tune memory capacity. The key objective is to streamline resources while safeguarding the uninterrupted functionality of the organization. It’s a delicate balance between achieving cost savings and ensuring that the organization’s operations remain resilient.

Cloud optimization

In the realm of cloud infrastructure optimization planning, it’s essential to delve into the details of the optimization process. This includes formulating a strategy that not only benefits the company, but also minimizes costs and risks while enhancing overall performance. The planning stage is where you finalize the approach and methodology to achieve these desired results.

Implementation

The implementation stage of IT infrastructure optimization is the moment of action, where the plans and strategies formulated during the earlier stages are put into practice. It marks the transition from planning and conceptualization to tangible changes in the IT infrastructure. During this phase, the organization deploys the necessary resources, makes configuration adjustments, and implements the solutions designed to enhance the infrastructure.

On-premise optimization

In the case of on-premise infrastructure optimization, the implementation stage may involve reconfiguration of hardware, consolidation of servers, and the adjustment of memory and processing capabilities. The key is to ensure that these changes are executed seamlessly, minimizing disruptions to daily operations.

Cloud optimization

Cloud optimization includes several possible approaches. Here’s a brief overview of each strategy:

Re-host (lift and shift): Involves moving existing applications and data to the cloud with minimal changes, seeking cost savings and scalability benefits. It’s quick, but may miss out on cloud-native advantages.

Re-platform (lift, tinker, and shift): Migrates applications with minor adjustments to optimize for cloud services. Balances simplicity with the benefits of cloud scalability and cost-efficiency.

Modernize: Requires restructuring or rearchitecting applications for full cloud-native capabilities, offering maximum scalability and performance enhancements.

Rewrite: Involves rebuilding applications from scratch to leverage cloud-native technologies, providing flexibility and top-tier performance.

Drop and shop: Replaces legacy systems with cloud-based SaaS or third-party solutions, simplifying the transition and reducing development effort.

Retain: Keeps specific applications or data on-premises, typically for compliance or operational reasons, requiring efficient integration with cloud-based systems.

To ensure a successful implementation, it’s essential to have a well-coordinated team, including IT professionals, project managers, and any necessary external experts.  Moreover, during the implementation stage, it’s crucial to maintain effective communication with all stakeholders, including employees, to keep them informed about the changes and potential impacts on their work routines. 

Benefits of Infrastructure Optimization

Enhance agility

Adopting virtualized infrastructure tools or cloud solutions can fundamentally change the way your company manages data. Isolated systems often result in complex IT environments that are slow to perform. To truly optimize, it’s important to gain full visibility into your IT landscape. IT infrastructure visibility empowers administrators with business agility, allowing them to make faster decisions and seamlessly adapt to changing market dynamics.

Increase network resiliency

Investing in networking solutions is a key step to improving the efficiency of your data center. A reliable network foundation is the cornerstone for speeding up tasks and balancing workloads. Virtualization of network functions, for example, reduces the need for large network hardware and thus reduces overall network complexity. 

Maximize your revenue

Leveraging the power of an advanced IT architecture can significantly increase your revenue. By breaking down silos and optimizing technology, you’ll create a more efficient ecosystem. Moving your IT infrastructure to the cloud has a number of benefits, from optimized data management to simplified procedures and seamless interoperability between applications and systems. For small businesses, this is a great opportunity to cut costs while still providing high-quality services that will ultimately attract more customers in the long run.

Get More Out of Infrastructure with IT Svit

On this challenging path, it is important to have a reliable partner. IT Svit has more than 18 years of proven experience and a team of 200+ professionals specializing in creating customized DevOps and AI solutions. 

Our team has experience in a variety of industries, including healthcare, e-commerce, banking, and more. We develop customized solutions using AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, and also have a solid portfolio in AI deployment.