Do I Need an Intelligent Edge?

Abstract

Businesses today are faced with an unparalleled number of choices and technology decisions as they try to intelligently evolve their systems. There are decisions about if, how, and when they should virtualize their datacenter, or if they should just continue to leverage the investment in their current physical assets. If they virtualize, should they use their own data center or a cloud provider, or a hybrid of both? If they decide to leverage a cloud platform, which of the hundreds of available service options should they use? How do these services fit together? What is the most cost-efficient option? The decision points and options can be very overwhelming. Cloud platforms have created a culture where the question is not “Is that possible?” but rather “Is that the most efficient way to do that?” In this environment, where so many tools and advanced capabilities are a click away, being innovative is not about having the capabilities but about correctly applying the capabilities to most accurately match the business need. It can be quite confusing if the right decision factors are not identified. Busyness does not equal productivity. In technical terms, having a fault-tolerant, highly available, cost-optimized, cloud-native architecture is still the wrong architecture if it does not correctly meet the needs of the business.