Five success factors for infrastructure transformation

There are three common pitfalls to avoid: Wrong technology at the wrong time, wrong security and wrong costs. It’s important that digital transformation leaders acknowledge the potential pitfalls. The timing of when you adopt new technology is just as important as the solution. Make the wrong choice and you could be stuck with technology that is not yet ready for the demands of operational deployment. Or, you may be forced into a technology dead end.

There are around 50 suppliers in the software-defined networking space alone, all making bold promises of agility and flexibility. And whilst the visions painted by these suppliers may be appealing, there are also significant risks and severe consequences if you get your evolution wrong. It’s vital that any technology partner is transparent regarding the hard truths about evolving infrastructure.

Quang Phuong at HedgeServ, counsels, “Be transparent with your costs. The overhead cost of building and moving to the cloud is quite expensive. There are a lot of intangibles that you should account for. Most revolve around retooling team members. The biggest challenge for the CTO is to sell the solution, but not oversell it. The true added value of the cloud is the built-in redundancy. And that’s what you should be selling.”

Vignesh Dumonceau adds: “It’s very important to separate the hype from the need – efficiency or improvement on business capabilities or capacity to serve the customer? Be clear how much disruption will be needed and the impact of a big disruption. I've seen situations where businesses went down because of it. Make sure there’s the appetite for transformation, because without the people – the human capital – and the financial capital, you cannot move forward.”