Leverage Technology to Its Fullest Potential Via Cloud and Infrastructure Modernization

Organizations face many challenges today as they try to serve their customers, shareholders, or constituents and bring innovation to the marketplace. Mergers and acquisitions are common in a fast-moving economy, and leaders are looking for quick integration wins in weeks, not months, to start achieving synergy. In IT, capital expenditures are cyclical but don’t always align with revenue trends or budget priorities and chief information officers (CIOs) are often asked to do more with less.

Consequently, shadow IT sprouts like weeds when the demand for features outpaces an IT organization’s ability to deliver them and sensitive data proliferates across services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and Slack. High profile data breaches are becoming more common and the impact on the companies affected by this has been staggering. IT leaders are being asked to enable teams’ agility and ability to be disruptive in the marketplace by facilitating faster software releases and automation of tasks that traditionally fall to skilled subject matter experts. Despite these competing priorities, most IT organizations must pick their battles and only focus on one or two at a time while other needs go unaddressed.

How can IT leaders leverage the cloud and modernized infrastructure to address these issues?

Streamline Your Infrastructure

Meshing companies, IT infrastructure, and application portfolios is never easy, but it is critical for successful organizations to establish a cohesive technology infrastructure. EmployBridge, a leading provider of outsourced human resource and specialty-branded temporary staffing services in the United States, has created a well-integrated technology infrastructure through the many acquisitions it has executed in the last few years. After each acquisition, EmployBridge partnered with Credera on several occasions to leverage our expertise in organizational change management, rapid cloud implementations, and identity management. By prioritizing the establishment of a unified infrastructure, EmployBridge experienced accelerated collaboration, integration and rationalization of redundant applications, quickly achieving the synergy they hoped to attain by combining organizations.

While it may be arduous, it is critical for IT leaders to prioritize platform consolidation. These endeavors include Active Directory consolidation, email consolidation on-premises or in Office 365, or implementation of a virtual directory service for quick integration. As in the case of EmployBridge, strategic unification yields dividends in efficiencies and can significantly reduce costs.

Address Security Concerns With IT Governance

Mature IT organizations strive to simplify identity management and ensure the right people have the right level of access at the right times. We’ve worked with clients such as EmployBridge and a leading retail company to document their employee lifecycle and compliance requirements, automate user provisioning/de-provisioning, implement access certification workflows, and centrally manage privileged access. Most of our clients are subject to PCI, HIPAA HITECH, SOX, or GDPR regulatory compliance. Consequently, we design our cloud and infrastructure solutions with those requirements in mind. Many of the conversations we have about governance are related to existing cloud services that have grown organically without any oversight or planning.

We’ve assisted one leading convenience retailer and a top investment management company with designing and implementing a governance structure that mitigates risk by enforcing standardized governance principles to protect critical shared resources while allowing business stakeholders, developers, and operations/engineering teams the access they need to work autonomously. We’ve also helped many of our clients navigate the sea of vendors offering single sign-on, federation, multi-factor authentication, and client access security broker services to find the solution that is right for them. Trying to wade through all of these offerings without first-hand experience can be a daunting task.

Modernize the Workplace with the Cloud

An increasing number of businesses modernize their workplace by developing new ways of delivering technology to users with cloud-based solutions, hybrid cloud solutions, and mature SaaS applications. Credera’s Cloud and Infrastructure team collaborated with a leading biotechnology company’s IT team to migrate around 30,000 of their users to Office 365 Exchange Online, allowing them to decommission most of their on-premise Exchange environment. We used our expert knowledge to guide this organization in creating appropriate Office 365 standard operating procedures, data loss prevention policies, and specific configuration updates for laptop, desktop, tablet, and mobile devices to ensure compliance and industry best practice. As part of the initiative, the team also streamlined desktop imaging and application deployment using Windows 10 and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager.

As previously mentioned, all of the services Credera provides are delivered with sound security and governance principles wrapped around them.

Credera’s Cloud & Infrastructure Transformation Service Area team is eager to help you maximize the value of your IT investments. We are prepared to partner with you to jumpstart your modernization journey through planning workshops, envision sessions, and maturity assessments. We are also equipped to tackle your toughest technology implementation challenges. If you have questions or would like to discuss cloud and infrastructure solutions, contact us at findoutmore@credera.com.

• Cloud
• Cloud And Infrastructure Modernization
• IT Governance