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In the tech sector, the only constant is change. This adage is as old as the industry itself, with endless examples of its inescapable reach, spanning providers who cannot keep pace with their consumers' expectations —yes, we are looking at you, RIM— to companies that fail to adapt their infrastructure and processes to the requirements of the modern technology landscape. For the latter, the consequences tend to manifest in a chronic, but relentless fashion: a widening gap with competing firms in both revenue and profitability, which can have disastrous consequences if left unchecked.
Even though business and technical managers are more than aware of this reality, it is common to find organizations that have either attempted a migration to newer technological frameworks that ended up in failure, or that have not even dared to take such a step. In both cases, the result is a reduced level of operational capacity (especially evident from a comparative perspective) together with almost insurmountable entry barriers for breakthrough solutions -think on the LLM revolution- that contribute to that dreaded comparative gap.
Some people assume this is a challenge mostly experienced by SME, when the reality is that it is shared across organizations of all sizes and nature, which struggle to define a viable strategy for their transition to newer tech and infrastructure strategies. But even those that do manage to get that process running, there is another component that tends to be overlooked and usually results in failed or underperforming outcomes: how to orchestrate the multitude of services offered within the cloud context in such a way that maximizes the cost savings and productivity increases expected from the migration process.
With the wealth of services available at any cloud provider, there can be dozens of different approaches to the same problem, each involving a completely different matrix of resources and configurations, resulting in diverging results from a functional and non-functional perspective. It is here where the real key for a successful migration lies: understanding not only what should be used, but how and when it should be used within the context of an organic, sustainable strategy.
It is here where Sidra provides an invaluable tool for organizations that are ready to face this daunting challenge. As I hope you already know from our previous posts, Sidra is a full-fledged data platform that covers the entire lifecycle of data, from its extraction from the source (with multimodal capabilities) to its exploitation at the business level. To achieve this, Sidra had to be designed to leverage multiple Azure resources -ADF, Azure Databricks, Storage Accounts, etc.- in the most efficient way possible, extracting as much value from each service both as individual elements and as parts of a robust and transparent architecture. In this capacity, our Platform acts as that orchestrator mentioned before, making each resource part of a unified and organic whole, which in turn translates to the one of the most efficient and effective exploitation strategies of Azure currently in the market.
This is how Sidra provides value beyond its principal role -acting as the foundation of a solid data strategy- by also being a trailblazer for the profitable exploitation of the possibilities offered by Azure as a cloud service provider.
But we have gone even further, by crafting our architecture in such a way that applications of all nature can integrate with the Platform at different stages of the data lifecycle. An organization that fully exploits Sidra will be able to use it as an “anchor” that integrates what were disjointed initiatives into a coherent ecosystem, bridging the gap between legacy systems and modern solutions, and potentially allowing the migration of the latter to the cloud if so desired.
We have seen this process unfold in multiple customers, who first approached Sidra as a mere data-oriented solution but ended up leveraging it as the backbone of their technological and infrastructure strategy. By migrating and/or building solutions to the framework offered by the Platform, these customers were able to reach a level of coherence and rationalization within their solutions catalog that had been previously out of reach, translating in cost reduction and increased operational margins.
Feeling curious about Sidra? Reach us at sales@sidra.dev, we are eager to hear from you!