Delivering Future-Fit Cloud Architecture for Greater Agility

Equinix and Telstra partner to launch end-to-end digital infrastructure solutions to accelerate enterprise transformation

Sam Ho
Guest Author - Truman Crotty
Delivering Future-Fit Cloud Architecture for Greater Agility

In today’s hyperconnected landscape, businesses worldwide need to reinvent themselves with digital-first strategies to increase opportunities and close profit performance gaps.

CIOs are facing tremendous pressure to balance enterprise-wide agility and digital transformation[1], while juggling an increasingly distributed workforce, complex IT ecosystems, increasing IT/OT convergence, and inflation. As businesses become increasingly interconnected, they are under strain to ensure secure and efficient data exchange and collaboration – which has repercussions on data sovereignty, privacy, interoperability and compliance. There is also escalating pressure in dealing with data explosion, cyber security threats, ensuring the consistency of the customer experience across multiple touchpoints, and more.

Embracing Agile with Hyperconnected Digital Infrastructure

While hybrid multicloud is not a new concept, having the technology strategy that right-fits, right-sizes and right-locates infrastructure investments to achieve optimal deployment of applications (apps), workflows and data lakes across various platforms, will be the key for enterprises to keep pace with today’s fast-evolving business landscape.

According to Flexera, public cloud remains popular in powering digital-first innovation, with multicloud reigning as the de-facto standard for all organizations[2]. However, 72% continue to prefer hybrid cloud[3], as some critical data and apps are deemed too sensitive for the public cloud. With hybrid cloud addressing concerns over lifting and shifting legacy systems without impacting performance or costs, businesses can enjoy greater peace of mind — with legacy and proprietary in-house systems remaining on-premises, while enjoying cloud economies. Omdia’s latest study confirms this preference, with very few organizations planning to move more than 60% of critical apps to the public cloud[4].

Top 3 Challenges CIOs Face in a digital era

As workflows and their requirements evolve, future-fit cloud architecture smoothens the transition to digital by simplifying the enterprise journey to help CIOs with these challenges:

  • Adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI): While AI modelling used to take years, out-of-box AI enables swifter adoption and deployment. This compels CIOs to stay ahead with AI developments, while juggling the escalating amount of data and computational resources required to develop and deploy generative AI.
  • Everything-as-a-service (XaaS): A recent Equinix survey revealed that 82% of APAC IT leaders are embracing XaaS[5] to increase agility and overcome complexity. Indeed, businesses are increasingly adopting subscription models to cope with global supply chain constraints that impede hardware procurement. Gartner also highlighted as-a-service models as one of the top trends shaping the future of cloud and edge infrastructure[6].
  • Governance/compliance: 70% of IT leaders say that they are gathering data faster than they can analyze and use it[7]. In fact, many find that having too much data that cannot be harnessed effectively can cause more liability, leading to increased compliance and regulatory risks[8]. As collaboration requirements across complex business/IT ecosystems and geographically-distributed workforces intensify, CIOs face challenges on managing the data deluge, while toeing the line for greater app interoperability, data integrity and sovereignty.

How hybrid cloud can help

Cloud computing offers scalable and cost-effective access to high-performance computing resources, with tools designed to deploy and measure model performance. This helps CIOs ensure better data quality, manage data volume and streamline data architecture. Hybrid cloud provides the required flexibility and scalability that businesses require, while addressing data security and compliance concerns. For example, it empowers AI adoption by crunching production data in the cloud, while keeping critical/sensitive data and workloads on-premises.

When deployed via a cloud-adjacent architecture, businesses enjoy greater provisioning speed and agility — by moving the right data and workloads to the right cloud at the right time, while maximizing access to public cloud services. IoT is a major driver for distributed, yet interconnected applications that move large amounts of data between edge and cloud, can benefit from improved performance.

Leveraging Telstra Hybrid Cloud for a Future-Fit Digital Infrastructure

Equinix and Telstra have partnered to offer Telstra Hybrid Cloud, a fully-managed, single-tenanted hybrid cloud deployment with rapid provisioning via Infrastructure as Code. It is powered by Equinix Metal, an automated interconnected and low-latency Bare Metal as a Service, which delivers fast, flexible and secure interconnected global infrastructure at software speed. It also features professional technology and consulting services from Telstra Purple.

Delivering the combined benefits of private and public clouds, the Telstra Hybrid Cloud ensures a secure, always-on, enterprise-grade and future-fit digital infrastructure that accelerates complex cloud migrations, while isolating and protecting sensitive workloads.

  • Eliminate high upfront CAPEX by offering dedicated hardware and flexible contract periods with predictable subscription-based billing.
  • Enable rapid cloud provision via infrastructure as code, with an integrated, flexible and secure cloud environment backed by high-speed global connectivity.
  • Empower real-time, scalable data processing on public cloud, while storing and executing analytical processes of sensitive data on the private cloud; enable flexibility in managing large data volumes, while ensuring robust security during data exchange.
  • Manage data closer to its source and reduce bandwidth required for edge computing; empower more responsive decision-making for personalized customer interactions.
  • Facilitate compliance with greater control over data location and movement

Why Equinix and Telstra

Equinix and Telstra’s long-standing partnership empowers enterprises with greater agility when adopting new technologies, while accelerating the migration and deployment of complex cloud environments.

  • Managed and dedicated infrastructure: Support journey towards multi-cloud with a fully managed and dedicated hybrid cloud deployment via Telstra Hybrid Cloud and Equinix Metal, which automates the deployment of interconnected bare metal infrastructure in minutes across 25+ global locations. Offer single tenancy to isolate sensitive workloads and access hardware-level security protocols. Seamlessly integrated with Equinix Fabric to connect distributed infrastructure globally via software-defined interconnection. End-to-end managed cloud services by Telstra Purple optimizes workloads from the cloud to the edge, including updating, patching, 24×7 proactive monitoring of network, security and other infrastructure components.
  • Speed of deployment: Accelerate migration and deployment of cloud environments
    by provisioning on-demand infrastructure and connectivity in minutes via Equinix Metal. Roll-out new apps and services globally with high performance compute anytime, anywhere. Enjoy further flexibility and ease in purchasing, managing and navigating one’s cloud environment across the globe via Telstra Hybrid Cloud.
  • Secured connectivity: Build a future-fit digital infrastructure foundation with a secure cloud environment via a dedicated, single-tenanted infrastructure hosted in Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers to ensure data sovereignty. Sharpen your security posture with Telstra’s advanced managed network and security capabilities, including threat monitoring and management services, for a secure cloud environment.

Contact us to find out how the Telstra-Equinix combined technology, global reach, and industry knowledge can be pivotal in shaping your strategy.

[1] https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/tip/Top-7-CIO-challenges-and-how-to-handle-them

[2] https://info.flexera.com/CM-REPORT-State-of-the-Cloud-2023-Thanks

[3] https://info.flexera.com/CM-REPORT-State-of-the-Cloud-2023-Thanks

[4] https://images.businessnews.telstra.com/Web/Telstrab2b/%7b1bc19f3e-7982-4167-bb5a-81f521054cce%7d_Best_of_both_worlds_-_Navigating_the_Hybrid_Cloud_landscape.pdf?elqTrackId=a6d0d8dd309849e6a4540f371ebbbded&elq=5226d55c00af4dddb40e6ac5e2442f16&elqaid=4607&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=

[5] https://blog.equinix.com/blog/2022/11/29/why-businesses-are-moving-to-everything-as-a-service/

[6] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-05-16-gartner-says-4-trends-are-shaping-the-future-of-cloud-data-center-and-edge-infrastructure

[7] https://boomi.com/wp-content/uploads/eBook-Modernization-Transformation-Innovation-Vanson-Bourne.pdf

[8] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/01/03/why-yes-there-is-such-a-thing-as-too-much-data-and-why-you-should-care/?sh=2eb55134c39f

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Sam Ho Senior Manager, Solutions Architect
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Guest Author - Truman Crotty Data Center and Hybrid Cloud Lead SEA, Telstra International
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