Navigating hybrid IT - key considerations

When setting up your hybrid IT arrangement, it’s crucial to have the ability to connect and configure your hardware however you like whilst maintaining diverse network connections, so early discussions with potential data centre providers should cover this key area. Connectivity will likely be fundamental in terms of how you might wish to use your environment – check with your provider how the two environments will work together in terms of networking and how workloads might be shared between them. And don’t forget to ask about diverse and redundant connections in and out of the data centre facility where your virtual environment will reside.

Data security is a priority for any modern business, but arguably even more so in hybrid IT where information is moving variously between on-premise data centres, private and public cloud environments. It’s therefore essential that you ensure there’s no security gap between these environments, and that high-risk data is only ever processed on high-security infrastructure. In a similar vein, if you have data sovereignty obligations, it is important to ensure that you are aware of where applicable data is being processed and stored.

Also, as it is likely you’ll be transmitting data across public networks, it’s important that your content remains secure and encrypted, both at rest and in transit.

Equally, your due diligence for any data centre provider should include the measures that are in place to safeguard the physical hardware you have entrusted to them.

Finding a provider who is willing to operate as a partner and not just a supplier is key to developing a successful hybrid IT strategy. Hybrid IT is a fairly new and complex delivery model, so they’ll be the team helping to support your infrastructure on a day-to-day basis and are ultimately the people who can help drive your business forward. Ideally, they should understand your environment as a whole – not just the elements under their jurisdiction – and be part of the discussion when planning and deploying your hybrid strategy. Reviewing the data centre team for operating processes, organisation, quality accreditations such as ISO27001, and general upkeep of infrastructure, is crucial.

Make resilience a priority when transitioning to a hybrid IT approach by choosing a data centre provider who understands how to minimise risk. Pay close attention to service level agreements (SLAs) that tell you what kind of resilience and uptime your provider promises to adhere to, and do your research into their track record.

To safeguard you in the event of an outage, ask about the backup technologies that your data centre provider can offer, and do your own research about how reputable they are.

The location of your physical infrastructure and your workloads is a consideration that cannot be overlooked. Before you move into hybrid IT through an off premise data centre and a cloud-based environment, make sure you know exactly where your kit and data will be stored – this is especially important for businesses who handle confidential and sensitive data.