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You might be tired of dealing with outdated technology that seems to slow you down at every turn. Or perhaps you’re constantly battling compatibility issues and struggling to integrate your legacy systems with newer technologies. On the other side, you might be facing other challenges—cost inefficiencies, security vulnerabilities, limited scalability, and the constant struggle to maintain and upgrade your systems while minimizing downtime. Whatever the case, it can be overwhelming. Outdated IT infrastructure can be a major roadblock. That’s where unified IT platform comes into play.
Tn this blog post we’ll dive deep into understanding how a unified IT platform like Virima and Ivanti can help organizations navigate through the complex journey of moving from legacy to modern IT infrastructure. But before that, let’s take a close look at the benefits and challenges of such transitioning.
The benefits of IT modernization and the risk of not transitioning
IT efficiency and cost-saving
IT modernization are synonymous with cloud computing, virtualization, and automation. One recent study by Sagepub emphasizes how cloud computing improve efficiency, and reduce costs enabled by the pooling and sharing of resource. As these technologies get integrated with the existing IT infrastructure, processes get streamlined and overall performance improves. The results can be seen in the form of reduced downtime and faster response time.
Due to cloud integration, optimized resource utilization reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO). The consequent reduction in maintenance cost is another thing to consider.
In stark contrast, legacy systems demand higher maintenance cost as it requires specialized skills and resources. Additionally, support for outdated hardware and software may become increasingly difficult to find, leading to increased downtime and operational risks.
Security, scalability, and flexibility
IT modernization are also synonymous with multi-factor authentication, encryption, and automated thread detection. Frameworks such as CIS (Center for Internet Security) emphasize the importance of implementing these in IT infrastructure to safeguard against cyber threats. Hence a modern IT infrastructure better secures an organization’s data in line with industry regulations and best practices.
As the legacy system lacks these security features, they’re more susceptible to cyberattacks. A recent IBM study on the cost of data breaches showed that companies with AI and automation saved way more (an average of $3 million) than those without modernized infrastructure.
As for scalability, modern IT infrastructure enables organizations to scale their resources up or down as needed. It means deploying new applications and services faster than possible with legacy systems. So it’s way easier to adapt to changing business requirements and support growth.
On the other hand, legacy systems may struggle to integrate with new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Such an inability to integrate hinders an organization’s ability to adapt to changing market conditions.
In spite of the obvious benefits, transitioning from legacy to modern IT infrastructure is a demanding process. Let’s take a look at the
Challenges Organizations Face in Transitioning to Modern IT Infrastructure
Integration and data migration
Legacy systems may use outdated technologies, protocols, or data formats incompatible with modern solutions. As a result, integrating these systems with modern infrastructure during the transition can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.
Also, while migrating data from legacy systems to modern infrastructure, organizations must ensure data remains accurate, consistent, and complete. This can be challenging with large volumes of data and/or complex legacy systems.
Read, change management for modern IT organizations
Security and Compliance
During the transition process, new systems and processes might not have the same level of security controls as legacy systems. Sensitive data might be exposed to unauthorized access. Also, the chance of accidental data loss or corruption remains. Such a state can result in organizations not meeting specific regulatory requirements and incurring potential penalties. All this can lead to data breaches, financial losses, and reputational damage.
Hence organizations should carefully plan and execute the migration process. You have to take security and compliance into consideration while drawing the process.
Skill gaps, workforce training, and managing change
The new skills and expertise required during the transition may not be readily available within the organization. This can lead to skill gaps and necessitate additional training or the hiring of new staff.
On the other hand, employees may be resistant to new technologies and processes. So this can impact the success of the transition. To deter this, organizations need to develop effective change management strategies. The most important component of it is clear communication, stakeholder engagement, and ongoing support.
How Virima and Ivanti’s unified IT platform helps in the transition
IT infrastructure discovery and visualization
When an organization is operating for many years, some of the infrastructure can be outdated and no longer aligned with the organization’s evolving needs. This demands transformation.
As the first step towards transformation, you need to have a comprehensive understanding of the entire IT environment. In this regard, IT infrastructure discovery and visualization tool such as Virima’s discovery and service mapping helps. It scans the network to collect comprehensive data about existing infrastructure and generates a visual representation of the entire IT landscape.
As a result, the tool identifies legacy systems, outdated software versions, and infrastructure components that need to be replaced or upgraded. It also provides insights into the impact of these legacy systems on the overall infrastructure and the potential risks associated with them. Now this visualization helps in identifying which components are critical and need to be migrated first.
Lastly, one crucial component of change is to see the impact of change before implementing it. The tool allows the organization to simulate the impact of changes and execute the migration with minimal disruption.
Due to the Virima and Ivanti partnership, you can avail yourself of the discovery and visualization capability from the Ivanti platform. You can integrate it with the change management module of Ivanti Neurons for ITSM.
IT service management
The IT service management platform makes the transition possible. The change management capabilities of the platform manage the challenges and complexities associated with IT infrastructure modernization.
Here’s how an ITSM platform like ITIL-compliant Virima ITSM can help organizations during the transition:
Change request management
The function allows organizations to create, track and manage change requests. Even change management workflows in Virima ITSM can automatically route requests. All this ensures that all changes are properly documented, approved, and implemented.
Impact analysis
The exclusive ViVID service maps ease the impact analysis. It assesses the potential impacts on other services due to the proposed legacy asset change. Also marks the pending changes and also those requiring approval on the map. On top of this, IT teams get to easily comprehend the change collision possibilities and consequently, the change approval gets democratized. Hence the change management speeds up resulting in a faster transition.
Due to Virima and Ivanti’s partnership, Ivanti Neurons for ITSM customers can access the powerful impact analysis feature from Ivanti UIs
Change scheduling, monitoring, and reporting
Once the requests are made, and potential impacts are analyzed, the ITSM platform facilitates the scheduling and coordination of change (also does during approval time). So changes get implemented in a controlled and orderly manner.
Then the reporting and real-time monitoring ensure a successful implementation; also it identifies any issues that may arise during the transition process.
Moreover, the natively integrated Virima Discovery ensures the changes confirm the configurations of both post and pre-change implementation. The same can be achieved by Ivanti Neurons for ITSM customers as they get Ivanti branded and supported Vrima Discovery in the form of the Ivanti Neurons for Service Mapping feature.
Unified IT asset management platform
The next important thing in this IT modernization effort is a unified IT asset management platform. It inventories and categorizes an organization’s existing assets and keeps track of the changed ones. For that, the platform captures details such as hardware specifications, software versions, licensing information, and connectivity dependencies.
Virima’s end-to-end IT asset management platform maintains accurate documentation and records of asset change; tracks the movements of assets, records configurations, and documents any updates or modifications made during the migration. The documentation proves to be valuable for later compliance, and auditing.
Due to Virima and Ivanti partnership, you can easily pair it with Ivanti CMDB and access it from there.
Read, IT asset management for cost optimization
A pathway to IT modernization: The unified IT platform from Virmia and Ivanti
The unified IT platform of Virima and Ivanti helps organizations move from legacy to modern IT infrastructure by providing various tools and platforms. Foremost, solutions such as discovery and mapping tools provide a comprehensive and accurate picture of the present IT environment. It identifies the legacy assets that need updation or replacement. This can be accessed from both Virima and Ivanti’s UIs.
Next, the ITIL-compliant Virima ITSM platform implements changes that make the transition possible. The same functionality can be achieved from Ivanti Neurons for ITSM with ViVID service map and Virima discovery integrated.
Lastly, Virama’s IT asset management platform keeps track of and documents everything.
Book a demo to learn more about how the unified IT platform from Virima and Ivanti’s partnership helps organizations move from legacy to modern infrastructure.
