Infrastructure

Global Infrastructure Services

Maximize the value of IT infrastructure with solutions that integrate deep industry insights, leading technologies and best-in-class execution. IFC’s end-to-end IT infrastructure and management services takes operational efficiency to a new level though HOLMES™, our cognitive automation platform. Our investment in IPs, partner ecosystem, industry bodies, software-defined everything, DevOps and technology consulting talent has helped our clients drive change through datacenter transformation, Cloud migration, workplace transformation, network services, and system integration. Our consulting-led agile approach and transformation toolkit helps accelerate and realize a Cloud-first vision much faster. The ability to rapidly evolve technology, process and automation, while adopting models like as-a-service, self-service, has helped elevate customer experience to a new level.

What We Do?

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BoundaryLess Data Center

Our BoundaryLess Data Center (BLDC) is an enterprise-wide ITaaS platform that enables us to be the preferred global digital services partner.

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Business Service Management

Business Service Management (BSM) solution boosts the ability of organizations to maintain the resilience of business applications. .

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digital future

With Hybrid Clouds, Collaboration, Mobile applications, IoT and Hyper-convergence, networking needs are becoming complex.

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DevOps

Rapidly changing business needs and the emergence of Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud have compelled IT to become more agile and effective in delivering services to the business units and their end customers.

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iQA

Infrastructure Quality Assurance (iQA) solutions enable clients to keep pace with continual change.

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IOT

Global Infrastructure Services (GIS) brings deep industry knowledge on sensors, devices, network, infrastructure and control platforms using connected intelligence framework.

What we Think?

NFV

There is an ever-increasing need for businesses to be agile; they should be cost-effective and adapt rapidly to the changes in the environment and customer behavior. This requires an agile and simplified IT infrastructure that can run and change along with the requirement of the industry and customer. IT infrastructure is one of the key enablers to make the business agile. However, if you look at the IT infrastructure of today, which runs many business applications for a service provider or enterprise, it will consist of multiple vendors’ function-specific network devices like router, firewall, load-balancers, etc., in hardware appliance forms.

How NFV can benefit enterprise

NFV, Network Function Virtualization, is a concept that addresses the above challenges, by leveraging the virtualization solution, e.g., ESX (from VMware), KVM (kernel-based virtual machine for Linux), to consolidate many network services onto a standard high capacity server, storage, and network switches. These virtualized servers could either be hosted in end-user location, network boundaries or operator’s data centers. NFV transforms the design and operation of the IT networks.

  • Lowers capital expenditures
  • Lowers operational costs
  • Flexibility
  • Scalability
  • Provisioning
  • Enhanced security
  • Improved security experience
  • Programmability

Mobility

Mobility has long been the inevitable step for every organization, particularly with the advent and popularity of laptops. This was followed by the rise of corporate mobility due to smartphones and other technologies, which was supported by companies like Blackberry. Along with growth in mobility, one of the most pressing concerns for any organization is corporate data security. Today, mobility has matured to a whole new level and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) has become one of the most influential trends that will affect every IT organization sooner or later. Like any new technology, BYOD brings its own set of fears and challenges, for all stakeholders equally. Obviously, every company wants to ensure that technologies are not misused and that their data not compromised while trying to give the best end user experience to their employees.At the same time, companies are battling to understand the implications of BYOD-led policies, security aspects, user support, legal obligations, personal spend management and governance.

Currently, mobility within most organizations is restricted to laptops and the accessibility of emails via corporate mobile devices mainly Blackberry. In many cases, this has now been extended to the use of iOS and Android devices by activating technologies like ActiveSync. However, for the successful implementation of True Mobility, it is imperative that employees have mobile access to the complete range of applications as they have on a desktop/laptop. This is easier said than done as porting applications to various mobile devices are a herculean task by itself. Moreover, in a mobile environment, smaller form factor displays are unproductive for most data creation. However, most organizations tend to use such small form factor devices inevitably making employees use traditional desktops/laptops thereby restricting mobility. So, the key areas to resolve before any organization takes the mobility plunge would be Application availability, unified secured access, file storage space and effective device management.

SD-WAN

The last decade has witnessed a considerable change in the server, applications and end-point device landscape. Transformation in Wide Area Networks (WANs), however, has not kept pace. But the widespread migration of networks and datacenters to Cloud, the growth in end-user wireless devices and bandwidth hungry applications are forcing CTOs to re-examine how they architect, provision and manage their enterprise networks. Traditional MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) used to manage network traffic has become expensive and can’t really scale. Fortunately, a solution in the form of Software Defined WANs (SD-WANs) is on the rise, and about 25% enterprises will use SD-WANs to manage their networks in the next 2 years. Today, only 5% do so. With 55% of IT budgets sucked up by WANs, it is natural that CTOs will want to examine how SD-WANs can solve their problems. Gartner assumes that by 2020, more than 50% of WAN edge infrastructure refresh initiatives would be based on SD WAN versus traditional routers (up from less than 2% today).

Currently, enterprises have a complex and expensive infrastructure at branch offices (sites) consisting of terminals/devices, routers, switches, bridges, controllers, firewalls, etc. The individual sites are hauled back to a regional HQ; the regional HQs may be connected between themselves or to a central HQ – which then provides users and applications with Internet/Cloud access. The fact that offices, employees, partners and customers don’t directly connect between themselves presents a handicap to real-time applications and collaboration. No enterprise can afford that. To overcome this, smart CTOs have begun to replace or supplement their traditional WANs with secondary links to low-cost business-grade Internet and are leveraging faster rovisioning through 3G/4G/LTE.

SD-WAN adoption

  • AConsult
  • Design
  • Migrate

SD-WAN unbox your branch office

Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) have revolutionized the world of networking. NFV’s success in telecom space and the imagination of a few experts to extend to this enterprise have given birth to the idea of Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization (ENFV). The concept of physical network appliances is going away, leaving only the switch as the lone wolf in the appliances space. Moving every network appliance from a physical world to virtual and packing them in a single x86 appliance is possible now. This Point of View (PoV) document discusses about one such trend of virtualizing important network and security functions and therefore making the branch networks run from a single box.

Current approach and its challenges

Large corporations of various industry verticals such as retail or banking heavily rely on branches in conducting day-to-day business for one simple reason – they are closer to the consumer of their products or services. While cloudification has successfully moved the applications to a central location, the people who need to access these applications are distributed across the country or globe. However, with the increasing costs and need for consolidation it’s no longer possible to have an IT staff member in each branch. Some of these branches may be as small as 5-10 employees. With increasing complexity in technologies, the generic IT administrators no longer can handle highly specialized IT tasks. You need specialized operating system administrators, back-up administrators, IT security staff and somebody to manage them all. Of course, a branch cannot afford an expansive IT department. Management of Head Quarters IT or the data centers are being outsourced to commercial outsourcing & professional services organizations. Can you manage a branch with no IT staff? Seems unrealistic, but with the branch-in-a-box approach, it’s doable.

New approach – Virtualized Branch Networking

Virtualized Branch Networking with the power of hyper-convergence is the new approach that is geared-up to address the above shortcomings.

  • It eliminates multiple appliances, converging them to a single appliance or a commodity x86 server
  • Redundancy is still a challenge, but can be addressed through software methods
  • Easier to replace an x86 server with the latest machine or scale it with additional memory and storage
  • No branch IT staff required
  • Option to centrally back-up the data (real-time or after office hours) and restore it when branch fails
This is achieved through virtualization of network functions including routing, wireless LAN controller, firewall, and virtualized servers for running various local applications. Switch may be still required, but a small network switch (supported by few manufacturers now) as a module in the server itself, serves the purpose. Access points cannot be replaced though.

Benefits

  • Minimize power consumption of several devices
  • Less space required (instead of a 42U rack, go for a 19U mounted cabinet rack)
  • Data loss eliminated
  • Improved security
  • Better user experience

Critical success factors

  • Ability to support Ethernet and other WAN terminations
  • Ability to support hardware level redundancy
  • Ability to support 3G/4G
  • Ability to restore the base image of the appliance/server using an USB/flash storage
  • Centralized backup and restoration
  • Wider support for business applications
  • Advanced security feature sets