Azure Local The Good, The Bad & The Hybrid - Azure Local - The Good, The Bad and The Hybrid

Azure Local

The Good,
The Bad
& The Hybrid

Exploring the next generation of
hyper-converged infrastructure,
on premises and in the Cloud

Azure Local - The Good, The Bad and The HybridContents

What is

Azure Local?

Azure Local
for Data Centre Modernisation

Azure Local
A Flexible Solution

Azure Local
for SQL Server

Azure Local
for Edge Deployments

Azure Local
for VDI

Azure Local
for Cyber Security

Azure Local
Conclusion

Thank you for reading

Azure Local:
The Good,
The Bad
& The Hybrid

Introduction

A staggering 93%¹ of businesses report difficulty recruiting the IT skills needed with the pace of technological evolution often cited as a key concern. Meanwhile, technical debt and resource constraint continue to weigh on IT departments, creating drag on resource provisioning and greatly increasing lights-on management and support costs.

It is estimated that the application container market will grow at a CAGR of over 28%² over the next five years, providing further pressure on IT departments to extend their skills into containerisation.

As a result, businesses are increasingly adopting Cloud-first strategies and, in doing so, relieving their operational teams of the maintenance and scaling challenges that have traditionally limited their ability to innovate. But by pushing workloads into public Cloud platforms that nevertheless run on virtual machines, new challenges around cost control have been created. Furthermore, the management of complex data paths to access large-scale storage platforms may result in a sub-optimal user experience when utilising the bandwidth-intensive applications that modern workflows often depend on.

^1. https://www.forbes.com/uk/advisor/business/software/digital-skills-gap/
^2.https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/application-container-market

In contrast, dedicated hosting with local infrastructure can:

Provide a lower TCO for always-on workloads.
Be tuned to meet the most stringent performance requirements.
Ensure data residency requirements are met.
Be close-coupled to in-place file storage.
Eliminate WAN latency in streaming data applications.
Provide assured always-on application availability at the edge.
Meet specific certification and accreditation requirements.

However, such deployments often prove costly and complex to manage and scale, placing a considerable strain on internal teams’ time and resources.

Azure Local offers a third way - all the advantages of dedicated hosting, combined with a seamless hybrid Cloud experience and reduced data centre complexity for app developers and system administrators alike.

In this paper, we will explore the full capabilities of Exponential-e’s own Azure HCI solution and introduce a number of highly attractive data centre modernisation, database, edge, and VDI use cases, providing a clear roadmap for its successful implementation and making the fullest use of its capabilities.

What is the biggest challenge your IT department faces today?

Skills shortage and talent acquisition
Managing technical debt
Keeping up with the pace of technology
Cost control and optimisation
Other