Do the following scenarios sound familiar to you?

The App Owner:

“Our current process for deploying IT services is too slow.”
“We need consistent and predictable application SLA delivery.”
“I need the access and tools to create, deploy, and manage business applications and services.”

The Data Center Admin:
“Central IT could dedicate resources for standing up virtual machines and applications all day long, and we still wouldn’t meet deadlines of our departments.”
“I wish I could delegate service and application deployment tasks.”
“We need to pool resources and stop ‘servers-under-the-desk’ syndrome.”
“We need to simplify the number of ‘IT products’ that are offered to the business and application developers.”

These common IT challenges can be addressed by abstracting your infrastructure into Azure Services. Azure can be your private cloud for your compute, networking and storage resources pooled together to provide an “abstracted fabric” on which you can run applications and services. Azure is elastic, usage-based, and provides self-service access to designated users.

Most IT departments of any size and complexity will benefit from the automation, standardization and elasticity this model provides.

But choosing and deploying a technology is the wrong approach to starting with Azure. Azure requires a focus first on the fundamental concept of turning IT into a service provider that delivers through a service catalog, using automation and probably being paid by usage. These changes are fundamental and require strong leadership, executive buy-in, and business-IT synchronization. It’s okay to start small, but it would be a mistake to allow technology to lead this transformation. Gartner research shows that 55% of customers want to adopt private cloud for increased agility, not cost savings. However, processes, politics, and existing IT role definitions can get in the way of smooth adoption of this model, not technical capabilities; something to keep in mind as you consider a move to the cloud.

The concept of delivering IT as a Service will transform how IT is consumed and will deliver a completely new cost structure at a much higher level of business responsiveness. Azure cloud services allows for computing on your terms and can deliver increased reliability, optimized performance that is compliant and up to date.

If you’re looking to bring these features to your organization, contact us below.