IT Modernization: What Are You Going to do With Your Custom Workloads?

As organizations continue to adjust to the realities of moving their applications to the cloud, it’s becoming clear that some applications are not suited to the public cloud for a variety of reasons. Notable examples include enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relations management (CRM), human resources, finance and other critical business applications.

To function properly in the public cloud, some applications often require significant refactoring. This process can be complex and expensive. The same challenge applies to the countless one-off custom applications operating on dedicated or monolithic infrastructure stacks.

What’s more, many applications struggle to maintain compliance when deployed in the public cloud due to regulatory restrictions. Also, applications that require specialized compute architectures or generate huge volumes of data may not be suited to the public cloud.

Fortunately, these applications no longer need to be excluded from the benefits of the cloud — including lower operating costs, consumption-based pricing, self-service functionality and rapid provisioning.

Organizations seeking an alternative cloud solution for their custom workloads — like those that are incompatible with the public cloud or generate high volumes of data — have an option: Moving to a managed, hosted private cloud. It delivers the advantages of the public cloud without the inherent drawbacks and a comprehensive and seamless solution for custom workload modernization.

Limitations of public cloud 

Even when organizations are willing to invest the time, effort and expense of refactoring custom workloads so that they can run in the public cloud, it can be difficult and time-consuming to find technicians, consultants and systems integrators with the right skillsets and experience to do the job successfully.

Despite the challenges, many organizations still want to take advantage of the public cloud’s cost efficiency, opex models and modern technologies. As they increasingly move their on-premises application portfolio to the cloud or to software as a service (SaaS) solutions, the companies are looking for ways to integrate their nonstandard workloads into the distributed architectures underlying the majority of today’s modern applications.  

Custom applications on hosted private cloud 

Rackspace Technology® provides comprehensive managed infrastructure services and specializes in tailored solutions for unique workloads. Leveraging an extensive suite of skills, advanced infrastructure and diverse services, our experts seamlessly migrate and reintegrate nonstandard workloads into multicloud ecosystems.

With over 20 years of cloud experience helping 100,000-plus customers, Rackspace Technology bridges the gap between the data center and the cloud with software-defined data centers (SDDCs) running VMware software. Out of the box, we provide a wide array of options, including: 

• Rackspace SDDC Flex: Offers consumption-based pricing, a flexible infrastructure, automation, DevOps and rapid deployment for lift-and-shift workloads.
• Rackspace SDDC Business: Offers a single-tenant solution to transition or extend on-premises VMware workloads into a managed cloud.
• Rackspace SDDC Enterprise: Offers a fully managed enterprise solution, including preconfigured and validated designs running on dedicated Dell VxRail Hyperconverged Infrastructure.

Other options for custom workloads include OpenStack, bare metal and managed Kubernetes — along with an extensive range of storage choices. There is also the option of leveraging our Tier 3 colocation facilities to house your own servers and data storage. 

Rackspace Elastic Engineering expands resource options

One of the services that helps achieve greater outcomes faster is Rackspace Elastic Engineering. This is a highly flexible, consumption-based, managed service that gives organizations a flexible dedicated pod of technology experts who work with the organizations’ internal teams on any project, including moving to a new cloud solution.

Rackspace Elastic Engineering lets organizations choose the right number of hours and skills for their needs on a month-by-month basis. Our 3,200-plus certified technical experts are available to help optimize workloads on infrastructure that, for all intents and purposes, seems to be running on-premises — but without the maintenance, provisioning and management headaches of operating company-owned facilities, servers, networking, middleware and storage. 

The engineers are also available to help with onsite challenges, such as optimizing continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines or improving cybersecurity defenses. A Rackspace Elastic Engineering team will work with you on any priority project requested. 

No refactoring required 

With bespoke managed infrastructure, applications that would have required extensive refactoring to run in a public cloud can simply be lifted and shifted into an environment that is designed specifically to run those workloads. 

To ease the integration of custom workloads into other applications and accelerate the movement of data between them, Rackspace Technology offers a dedicated private fiber network, called RackConnect® Global. This network connects all Rackspace Technology SDDCs around the world to each other, thereby, extending our customers’ premises. This dedicated high-speed interconnection enhances the security of data on the move, while reducing data egress costs when compared to public cloud providers. 

Keep custom workloads working smoothly

The decision to move custom, non-standard workloads to the cloud is not an easy one. Because the applications were designed to run on bespoke infrastructure and monolithic architectures, simply lifting and shifting them to the public cloud is rarely an option. 

Rackspace Technology managed private cloud solutions offer a way forward. You gain the benefits of the cloud without the drawbacks of running highly customized, mission-critical workloads on a public cloud’s shared environment.  

With Rackspace Technology, you can maximize your digital transformation programs, avoid expensive refactoring projects, and release highly talented experts to work on business-critical projects — all while optimizing the cost of legacy workloads.  

This post was created with Dell Technologies sponsorship.