Thinking outside the cloud: bring cloud agility to your entire infrastructure

Cloud technology is a springboard for digital transformation, delivering the business agility and simplicity that are so important to today’s business. Cloud is also a powerful catalyst for improving IT and user experiences, with operating principles such as anywhere access, policy automation, and visibility.

The benefits of cloud for the business, for IT operations, and for employee experiences are clear. But what if you could take the best principles of cloud and apply them across your entire IT infrastructure?

Simpler operations belong everywhere—not just the cloud

There’s no reason that the benefits of cloud need to be limited to the cloud. With the right strategy, platforms, and solutions, organizations can bring the cloud operating model to the network and across the entire cloud and network IT stack. In fact, in a recent IDC study, 60% of CIOs stated they are already planning to modify their operating model to manage value, agility, and risk by 2026.

Transitioning to this new operating model unlocks more benefits for IT leaders, in more environments and use cases. It simplifies operations for on-premises and cloud infrastructures, cutting down the complexity and fragmentation created by disconnected tools and consoles—and the different skill sets needed to work with them.

Expanding the cloud operating model also sets the stage for better collaboration between network, development, and cloud operations. By introducing a common model and language that transcends operational silos, this approach helps reduce points of friction between organizational handoffs.  The result: teams can collaborate and work together to solve problems more smoothly. Processes become more consistent, predictable, and less prone to manual errors.

Bringing the cloud operating model to the network helps your teams execute faster and be more agile. It can automate tasks such as deploying a new distributed application for users in the home and office. For example, with a cloud-managed SD-WAN, a company can establish connectivity and security in about an hour. With a traditional siloed approach, those same steps could take NetOps, DevOps, and SecOps teams days.

Once an application is up and running, the cloud operating model can support greater visibility into cloud and data center operations, application deployment, and performance. When you have improved end-to-end visibility, you can react more quickly. Your teams can troubleshoot faster, tune performance more easily, and enjoy a more intuitive experience as they do it.

When you simplify IT, better experiences and outcomes follow

What happens when the cloud operating model is brought to the network? Organizations gain the benefits of a simplified IT approach and better user experiences. But that’s not all. It also frees IT leaders to focus, innovate, and deliver better business outcomes.

Improving the application experience

Applying the cloud operating model expands visibility, creating an end-to-end view that enables more consistent governance across the infrastructure, from the network to the internet to the cloud, to help ensure a better application experience for every user.

Powering a more agile, proactive business

Making IT more agile ripples across the whole organization. By automating manual processes, you can get out in front of business changes, deploying resources to support new applications, so you can meet changing needs for business stakeholders, faster.

Controlling costs

Expanding a common operating model helps your teams work smarter with consistent management of the deployment, optimization, and troubleshooting lifecycles, both in the cloud and on-premises.

Breaking down silos for productivity

Cloud operating principles can enable consistent governance that helps bring down the barriers between siloed cloud and network teams—and help IT move beyond fragmented operations with different policies and processes.

Applying stronger security everywhere

Cloud consistency can also enhance security. With automation and improved end-to-end visibility, you can build security into every environment and make automated security updates an integral part of all lifecycle management.

Bring the best of the cloud across your infrastructure

There’s no “one size fits all” approach to a cloud operating model. It needs to be designed and tailored to align with each organization. With the right strategy, platforms, and services, you can take a big step toward simplifying IT to deliver unified experiences and improved business agility.

Discover how.