IT Innovators: Easing The Transition to a SDDC

Take the time to ensure the SDDC is the right choice for your organization. Despite the fact that the SDDC is a key buzzword these days and offers a number of highly advantageous benefits, it is not right for every organization. Don’t buy into it just because you think everyone else is. Find out what specifically it can do for you and how, and make sure that is something you actually need and will benefit from. If there is no real business case for why you should implement a SDDC, don’t do it.

Make sure you have the support in place before you start transitioning. Regardless of how much outside help you can get with implementing a SDDC solution, you will still need highly trained IT professionals to help implement, monitor and manage the technology once it’s in place. The time to secure those professionals is before any work begins, not after. And make sure they not only have a good understanding and skills for working with SDDCs in general (e.g., orchestrating and automating repetitive tasks), but are also trained to work with the specific solution from the specific vendor you have selected. After all, not all SDDC solutions are equal. You can’t assume that because an IT professional has skills with one solution from one particular vendor, those skills will translate to another solution from another vendor. For some organizations, it may even make more sense and be less risky to choose a SDDC solution based on the existing skillsets available in house.

Consider using open source standards. If you want to avoid being locked into using one vendor’s software then working with open source standards might be the way to go. Don’t think you can avoid all lock-in; however. But, if you take the time to select a SDDC vendor carefully, you can minimize how locked in you become with any one vendor.

Be open to changing the way things are done. Like the hybrid cloud, the SDDC is changing the way things are done today. Organizations are beginning to turn away from the use of traditional IT infrastructure in favor of one where the functionality is separated from the underlying hardware. The benefit, of course, is automation, flexibility and increased scalability. It can also help reduce data center complexity and lower cost, which in the end, makes organizations much more agile and competitive. To fully embrace these benefits though, organizations have to rethink the way they operate. Rather than operating in separate silos, organizations need to come together as one big integrated IT team, with team members learning to communicate and work together in a new, more cohesive way. Putting the processes in place to make this happen before making the transition to SDDC can minimize any problems once the solution is in place and ensure you reap the full benefits of the SDDC sooner rather than later.

Set a measurable business goal and work toward it. Doing this means you need to be able to measure what you’ve done so that you have a way to monitor and improve it as you go. That doesn’t necessarily mean monitoring performance. On the contrary, with the SDDC, what you deem important to measure may not be the same as that being measured by another organization. For example, you may decide that power is essential since the more power you use, the more money you spend. Or, speed may be your key metric; whether the speed of deployment or of diagnosing problems. The point is that you should establish which metrics you want to measure before implementing the SDDC. Then, by monitoring them you can see if you are achieving your business goals and in the process, gain more fuel for the fire to be able to prove the success of your SDDC implementation to upper management.

Decide whether your SDDC will be used in conjunction with a hybrid cloud, public cloud or private cloud. Whatever solution you chose, make sure that it will work well with your SDDC and help you achieve your organization’s business goals.