P2P

58 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S U M M E R 2 0 2 3 • Creation of regional data centers, moving much of the infrastructure out of individual offices • First major applications transitioned to the cloud, typically document management and email systems, often the first SaaS implementations • Increased bandwidth to support centralized data centers and high-demand SaaS applications The final stage (Stage 3), which many firms aim for, includes: • Provision of notebooks for all users (or appropriate roles) • Single centralized data center (or 2-3 regional data centers for large international firms) • Significant bandwidth where it doesn't really matter where you are – you have the same user experience accessing firm applications and resources. Centralizing the data center not only improves IT efficiency, but it lays the foundation for hybrid operations through enhanced office connectivity and remote access. That consolidated data center can also be moved to the cloud. For our purposes, we've accomplished the goal of supporting hybrid operations via the consolidation whether it runs on servers owned by the firm or rented from a cloud provider like Microsoft Azure, AWS, etc. Transitioning to a consolidated IT infrastructure, potentially cloud-hosted, is a major change in your firm's technological landscape, with significant benefits: • Enhanced efficiency: with consolidated infrastructure, IT tasks are streamlined as they are easier to manage and scale, reducing the time spent on administration. This leads to improved productivity as IT staff can focus on strategic tasks rather than managing disparate systems. • Enhanced collaboration: the increase in bandwidth necessary to support centralized infrastructure results in better connections between offices and remote access. Q 2 W H I T E P A P E R S Stage 2 - Regional centralized data centers, less IT infrastructure in each office, notebooks deployed to many users, and first major applications moved to the cloud, typically document management and email; higher bandwidth Stage 3 - Single centralized data center (which may be hosted in the cloud), significant bandwidth connecting offices, notebooks deployed to most users, more niche applications moved to SaaS

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