This blog post was co-authored by Alexis Debreu, Principal Solutions Architect, Dell Technologies.
Every new cloud capability brings both possibility and complexity. Many organizations looking to modernize their distributed environments can now find the task simplified by Orange Business Microsoft Azure Stack HCI powered by Dell Technologies, a hybrid cloud solution that allows businesses to extend Azure services and capabilities to the environment of their choice—from the data center to the edge to the cloud.
Cloud Promises and Cloud Challenges
The cloud opened the door for organizations to build groundbreaking new business models and solutions. However, the public cloud does have its limits, particularly when it comes to systems performance and design options. Most businesses adopted a hybrid cloud to address these issues while modernizing their on-premises legacy IT infrastructures to better respond to evolving demands.
For many, the next step after connecting their primary data center was to explore the possibility of enabling the whole organization with these new capabilities. By directly connecting remote factories, retail shops and branch offices to this technology, businesses could avoid clogging the communication pipelines with primary data center traffic or incurring the high cost of transferring encrypted data from the public cloud.
The possibility is tantalizing, but implementing a truly decentralized cloud-at-the-edge system at scale within an organization is very complex. A distributed environment must serve remote locations and branches with cloud edge services that comply with data privacy regulations and provide response times that keep production on target. It must also meet company security policies while ensuring interoperability and consistency. To accomplish this, organizations need a skilled team and strong, unified governance. But talent is scarce.
Simplify the Edge with the Power of Three
Organizations can simplify the edge and bridge the talent gap by turning to a partnership of infrastructure, software and service providers who leverage a verified, validated solution. The best of these alliances offers a combination of cloud-at-the-edge processes, tools and expertise to extend internal IT teams and offer consistent control, all while unifying billing, management and support to simplify the entire hybrid environment.
An experienced infrastructure provider can simplify the interoperation of the different resources—compute, storage, networking and the cloud ecosystem—to ensure organizations can run all their applications and minimize the footprint on each site, including edge deployments.
Dell recently announced the availability of Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure, that takes a full-stack, turnkey approach to optimizing Azure operations on-premises. With a close, collaborative engineering between Dell and Microsoft, coupled with extensive full-stack automation capabilities, the solution ensures rapid availability of patches and updates—within four hours of Microsoft release, while reducing deployment steps by 88% when compared to our existing, market-leading Dell Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI
On the software Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) side, organizations need to optimize the joint performance of the hypervisor, operating system and databases. With an extensive partner ecosystem and designed to cover the whole DevSecOps lifecycle of applications on-premises, Azure Stack HCI allows organizations to hold sensitive data where it matters while securely reaching Azure public cloud. With Azure Stack HCI, organizations can use the same tooling environment wherever their applications are deployed, on-premises or in the cloud.
Organizations need cloud experts who understand their goals, timelines, and restrictions to ensure a successful hybrid cloud transformation. This team should have a global presence and a strong relationship with infrastructure and software providers to support the entire journey, from consulting, design and implementation to day-two operations.
The ideal partner will offer an extended team capable of handling side projects such as edge connectivity, workload migration, cybersecurity protection and AI use cases. However, there are only a handful of players in the market who can achieve this type of end-to-end managed service.
Extend Your Environment from the Cloud to the Edge with Orange Business, Microsoft and Dell Technologies
Orange Business is a leading network native digital services integrator, supporting customers to create positive impact and digital business. The combined strength of its next-generation connectivity, cloud and cybersecurity expertise, platforms and partners provides the foundation for enterprises around the world. With 30,000 employees across 65 countries, Orange Business enables its customers’ transformations by orchestrating end-to-end secured digital infrastructure and focusing on the employee, customer and operational experience.
Together with Dell and Microsoft, Orange Business extends Azure services and Azure capabilities to your environment of choice. To learn more about how Orange Business Microsoft Azure Stack HCI powered by Dell can simplify your edge, contact us now.
