transformation

Author: Sébastien Lambotte Photo credit: EBRC “For many organisations, one of the current challenges with regard to providing support in the context of the business’ digital transformation lies in strengthening their ability to deploy services in a more agile and secure way” says Yuri Colombi, EBRC Head of Solutions & Innovation. “This requires them to be able to rely on Yuri Colombi - Head of Solutions & Innovation,

HYBRID CLOUD, DEVOPS, OBJECT STORAGE:

BOOST YOUR TRANSFORMATION

The IT environment must constantly evolve in order to adapt to the business’ transformation and enable the company to improve its performance. The times call for resource hybridization, between dedicated infrastructures and public clouds, and for bringing together development and operations stakeholders. In order to help its customers to better evolve, EBRC completed its service portfolio by implementing more flexible platforms making it possible to migrate between environments, thereby providing its customers with increased agility.

a more scalable IT environment also offering guarantees in terms of and Gérard Miceli - Innovation Consultant - EBRC data protection.” To this end, EBRC has developed a digital transformation support offering to help organisations to more easily migrate to the hybrid cloud and implement DevOps initiatives based on robust governance.

— ADOPTING

CONTAINERIZATION TO

MANAGE AND FACILITATE

HYBRID DEPLOYMENTS

One of the first challenges involves providing the IT department with increased agility with regard to IT resource management. The corollary to technological development is the introduction of increasingly containerized applications. “Contain technology facilitates IT management across increasingly hybrid environments, using on-premise, private and public cloud infrastructures” explains Gérard Miceli, EBRC Innovation Consultant. Containers offer an additional level of abstraction. “They can therefore be deployed in any type of environment, thanks, in particular, to the Kubernetes orchestration tool that we use. Technology offers a great resilience, business continuity and

deal of flexibility in migration towards the public cloud, for instance.”

— MOVING TOWARDS

THE HYBRID CLOUD

Today, EBRC positions itself as a full-fledged cloud stakeholder by providing its customers with access to the environments most suited to their

needs, whether they are dedicated or widely shared. “We provide them with support in analysing opportunities linked to the evolution of their environment. Contrary to popular belief, using the public cloud is not necessarily the most affordable solution. An analysis of needs must be conducted. With a good understanding of the issues, we can better guide organisations on the path towards the hybrid cloud”, adds Yuri Colombi.

— A PLATFORM FOR

FACILITATING DEVOPS

Moreover, EBRC wants to make it easier to build bridges between development and operations. “The flexibility our customers gain with regard to the management of environments can also be reflected in the way that they develop and deploy new features, particularly through the use of DevOps approaches” says Gérard Miceli. “The challenge lies in implementing a continuous development process and guaranteeing the easy and secure integration of new features.” With this in mind, EBRC facilitates the industrialisation of deployment from a platform specifically designed for the purpose. “We provide support to our customers with regard to the operational management of the platform that we make available to them and which is based on a multi-cloud environment” explains Yuri Colombi. “The platform, through which containers can be easily orchestrated, makes it much easier to implement a DevOps approach. Through the platform, our customers gain access to a range of certified deployment tools and a wide range of data analytics solutions.” The entire package is designed to improve the autonomy of organisations, make them less dependent on technical resources

IN THE CONTEXT OF SUPPORTING CUSTOMERS’ TRANSITION

TO THE CLOUD, EBRC HAS ALSO IMPLEMENTED A DATA HOSTING AND PROTECTION SERVICE USING “S3” OBJECT STORAGE TECHNOLOGY.

and enable them to easily deploy services and micro-services based on their current needs. “This makes it possible to considerably reduce the time-to-market”, confirms Gérard Miceli.

— PROVIDING SUPPORT IN

THE TRANSFORMATION

OF METHODS AND

APPROACHES

Faced with these challenges, EBRC intends to be more than just a technological partner. While continuing to ensure the management of operational aspects, with guaranteed service levels based on current needs, the trusted service provider offers support in the evolution of governance and the management of its customers’ architectures. “To achieve this, in addition to the technological platform, we offer a full range of services and training opportunities aimed at enabling them to activate the transformation throughout the innovation value chain” explains Yuri Colombi. “Each organisation can therefore take advantage of the full extent of EBRC’s and its partners’ expertise in order to fully enter the digital age.”

— MORE FLEXIBLE STORAGE

BETTER GUARANTEED

OVER TIME

In the context of supporting customers’ transition to the cloud, EBRC has also implemented a data hosting and protection service using “S3” object storage technology. “In the move towards increasingly heterogeneous environments, the aim is to offer solutions that improve data storage, guaranteeing its integrity over time, with greater flexibility” comments Gérard Miceli. “Object storage is the answer to these new challenges.” Object storage facilitates migration to and integration with the public cloud in the context of system hybridization. The technology integrates the major standards of the market and especially the API used by the giants of the cloud. Customers enjoy high reversibility and can therefore easily migrate between environments while guaranteeing the integrity of their data. By addressing storage issues in a new way, this technology makes it easier to manage large volumes of unstructured data. “Object storage was specifically designed to guarantee data protection and integrity over the long term” highlights Yuri Colombi. “Whereas elements were previously accessed from a disk, this new storage method enables each object to be protected and encrypted individually. Therefore, we are able to guarantee compliance with the most stringent regulatory requirements. Object storage integrates reading and writing mechanisms for the elements by design, thus ensuring redundancy and automatic error correction.”