Hybrid IT – Managing Complexity

In today’s digital world, very few IT leaders are yet to introduce a Cloud-based IT service to the business. With almost universal adoption rates, Cloud is part of mainstream IT.

The aims are to remove the complexities of managing a diverse IT domain by removing the burden of management, one server or application or cluster at a time. It aims to take hardware CapEx out, lower OpEx to a manageable level, and free up IT to concentrate on innovation rather than operation.

In today’s world of Hybrid IT, Cloud appears as a viable first class citizen in the organizational IT infrastructural smorgasbord. And despite Cloud’s almost universal popularity, it isn’t replacing the rest of IT overnight – after all, 40 years or more of IT investment and architectural complexity can’t be picked up and moved elsewhere very quickly.

Managing a Hybrid IT infrastructure, a complex array of interwoven, often inextricable pieces of must-not-fail application technology is also far from straightforward. Keeping the lights on does, now more than ever, keep the average CIO up on a good few nights.

A major challenge remains – how best to move, manage and modernize IT to best serve the business.

A Cloudy Outlook?

At Micro Focus we are seeing a genuine seismic shift in customer attitudes towards Cloud computing. The 3rd party vendor space is competitive and each offering gets better with each year, offering genuine customer value.

Our part to play is to ensure a variety of underlying capabilities are offered to help clients get to, and leverage the Cloud, and partner with the best in the industry to support the innovative technology our customers demand.

Managing complexity in a Hybrid IT reality

If Cloud is a solution, what’s the problem? We’ve encountered many problems our customers are trying to solve in their Hybrid environments. But there are some very typical use cases where we’ve partnered with the best to provide the right solution.

Moving critical applications and server workloads is a sensible thing to do from time to time in support of business need, architectural strategy, IT investment policy, and all manner of other drivers. The reality of moving mission-critical servers and applications however, well it’s not quick, not easy and not without considerable risk. Imagine your CRM down for a day, your email down for a week, or your order processing inoperable for the last few hours of the month. Moving systems takes time, energy, smarts and, for the major servers especially, a failsafe process. Micro Focus’ solutions for server workload migration have been solving that challenge for years, from server to server, server to virtual, server to Cloud, our attitude is always yes, wherever to wherever.

Changing underlying infrastructure is something IT can predict. But the nature of business, and how IT supports it, is unpredictable. Things can go wrong. Servers crash. Machines can break. Critters eat through power cables. So an always-on monitor of server “health” keeps track of the unforeseen, and provides a backup plan in case of an outage. Practical Hybrid IT management.

In some cases the organization has looked to embrace Hybrid IT, whether Linux, Windows, UNIX or some flavour of Cloud and, very sensibly, is asking – can we redeploy our most mission-critical mainframe systems there too? Micro Focus is ahead of the curve, answering “yes” before the question is asked. Our Cloud support has been inclusive of mainframe COBOL systems for years, so the “can I take this mainframe app to AWS?” or “will this work in Azure?” questions are an emphatic yes using our Enterprise Suite technology, whether those core mainframe systems are COBOL or PL/I, whether they use JCL, CICS, DB2, IMS or VSAM.

The Micro Focus solutions for Hybrid IT – Move, Manage, Modernize

Micro Focus helps our customers accelerate their digital transformation by helping them migrate to and benefit from the power of the cloud.  Micro Focus delivers the industry’s only end-to-end workload and application transformation to the cloud for mainframes and servers. Micro Focus provides capabilities to manage even the most complex of Hybrid IT environments, working with the best Cloud technology available, to support digital initiatives, while protecting core business processes.

We’re delighted to be working with some of the best technology partners in the industry. And we’re delighted that some of the industry’s biggest organizations are taking advantage already. Cloud isn’t a new idea, but neither is the reality of IT being complicated. No matter the strategy, Micro Focus technology helps you move, manage and modernize in today’s Hybrid IT world.

See for yourself

Micro Focus partners with the best in the business to support our customers’ cloud strategies.

Micro Focus will be exhibiting at AWS Transformation Day on October 30 in London.

Additionally, Micro Focus is sponsoring the conference AWS re:Invent which will take place in Las Vegas,  November 26-30.  Join us at our booth (Venetian Sand Expo, #1905) and our technology sessions at the Encore, Chopin 4 room, from 1pm onwards.

We look forward to meeting you there, or if you have any questions find me on Twitter .

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