Most enterprises struggle with IT challenges as they seek growth in a demanding business environment. 51% of digital transformation efforts arise from growth opportunities and 41% from increased competitive pressure. But a whopping 80% of such digital transformation initiatives fail.

Coping with today’s uncertain business environment requires a combination of adequate infrastructure resources and quick decision-making capabilities. Businesses need scalable storage capabilities to cope with the ever-increasing volumes of data and computational needs. They also need to move fast to changing trends and customer sentiments. The solution lies in sustainability and agility.

Sustainability

Sustainability stakes have become high today and go beyond social commitment. Economic, social, and environmental sustainability improves efficiency, brand value and reputation. It also helps attract the best talent and institute a base for innovation. 

Sustainability may reduce costs and make the company’s products more appealing to customers. Baking in sustainability helps the business do more with less. Specifically, they can find effective and consistent solutions to pressing issues such as complexity and data overload. 

Most enterprises understand the importance and benefits of sustainability. But they are unable to go about the task.

IT enterprises can become sustainable by:

• Virtualization. Virtual servers, storage, and network instances reduce energy consumption and physical hardware costs.
• Embracing the cloud: Moving workloads to the cloud reduces energy consumption and carbon footprint.
• Improving energy efficiency: An enterprise can improve energy efficiency in many ways, such as:
  • Using energy-efficient servers, desktops, laptops, and other hardware.
  • Designing and implementing green data centres with energy-efficient cooling systems and renewable energy.
  • Eco-friendly practices such as energy-efficient lighting and placing computers on sleep mode.
• · Implementing proper recycling and disposal practices for IT equipment.
• Encouraging telecommuting and remote work to reduce the load on offices.

Agility

Successful enterprises embrace agile methodologies. Agile practices and approaches promote collaboration, resilience, flexibility, and rapid iteration. Agile enterprises respond quickly to changing market conditions and customer needs. 

However, resistance to change, outdated processes, and lack of a clear strategy drag enterprises into their agile journey. 

Enterprises would do well to 

• Embrace lean. Lean focuses on continuous improvement to reduce waste and maximise value. Adopting these lean principles improves efficiency, reduces costs, and boosts quality. 
• Promote innovation. An innovative culture encourages employees to take risks, experiment, and challenge the status quo. A good model worth emulating is Google’s “20% time” policy that allows employees to spend 20% of their work time on personal projects. Such time off to innovate has led to the development of several successful products, including Gmail and Google Maps.
• Leverage analytical insights. Analytical insights help enterprises make informed decisions and respond to market conditions quickly. Netflix uses data and analytics to personalise recommendations and improve the content library. 
• Build a cross-functional team. A cross-functional team improves communication and collaboration. Team members from varied backgrounds offer multiple perspectives, enabling better quality decisions. 
• Invest in automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Harnessing AI and automation to do away with manual processes improves process accuracy, predictability, and reliability. Intelligent Ai enables taking automation to the next level. Advanced automation enables maximising uptime and lowering costs. 

Security

In the quest to become agile and sustainable, security often becomes causality. Growth inevitably involves change, and change that alters the status quo comes with a security risk. Even otherwise, the steady increase in cybercrimes places most enterprises at risk. 

The enterprise way of work has changed of late. Key developments over the last couple of years include:

• The popularity of remote work.
• Widespread adoption of the public, hybrid, and hybrid clouds. Introduction of new approaches to coding, such as CI/CD techniques.

Such developments pose fresh security challenges. 

Enterprises must align their security with new models that sustain agility and sustainability. They need to: 

• Get the basics right. Apply
  • strong passwords.
  • multi-factor authentication (MFA).
  • firewall and antivirus software
  • encryption 
  • patches to update software.
• Conduct regular security audits to detect vulnerabilities and pinpoint areas of improvement.
•  Offer security awareness training to employees.
• Deploy robust network monitoring and intrusion detection systems and an incident response plan.

But traditional tools and methods have become obsolete in the changed business circumstances.

Enterprises must consider the following approaches to keep their networks and systems safe.

1. Security as a Service (SECaaS), to enable cloud-based security, complete with scale and efficiency. SECaaS offers data storage, analysis, security management, and user interface through the cloud. Certain elements, such as vulnerability scanners, log collectors, and agents, remain onsite. These resources communicate using API and secure protocols to offer a unified view of hybrid environments.

2. Extended Detection and Response (XDR). XDR improves network monitoring by offering enhanced visibility and control across multiple environments. A standard XDR approach involves 

• • tooling to gather information, 
  • incident analysis, and 
  • modifying the system state to disrupt attacks.

3. Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). SASE replaces the conventional restricted access points on the perimeter with virtual perimeters. It enables location-independent access to company resources. Access policy decisions depend on policy, identity, device, and data-aware security controls. Integrated security systems enforce information-based controls depending on the context, activity, and data type. SASE adopts the zero-trust approach to apply trust to individual resources rather than entire networks. 

4. Container Security allows for the rapid patching and consistent configuration of microservices platforms. Segmentation of the application into microservices does away with the complexities and dependencies. But immature deployments of microservice architectures make it no better than monolithic applications. In-built security in the CI/CD process supports rapid development cycles. 

To complement the changed approaches, enterprises need state-of-the-art tools. A good example is PureStorage’s innovative storage solutions. The cloud-ready tools go much beyond keeping data safe. It breaks through bottlenecks and generates powerful insights from data.

The FlashArray//C enterprise-grade quad-level cell, for instance, offers hyper-consolidation and simplified management. The powerful, integrated tool goes where hybrid tools cannot reach. FlashBlade//S scale-out storage platform facilitates storing vast quantities of unstructured data. The device delivers cutting-edge capabilities without growing complexity. AIRI//S simplifies AI deployment and enables companies to focus on the output rather than waste time managing their IT tools. The tool also enables quick scale, supporting flexibility and agility. Enterprises can also opt for subscription-based storage models that further sustainability and convenience. Evergreen//One offers a very flexible subscription service. Evergreen//Flex adds flexibility and agility to the mix. Enterprises can maximise ROI on capacity usage with lower upfront costs. Evergreen//Forever goes beyond and delivers seamless, disruption-free rapid upgrades and expansion.