Infrastructure / Microsoft 365 and Azure / Hybrid infrastructure
What should stay on your premises, and what no longer needs to be there.
A hybrid infrastructure is decided on a service-by-service basis.The question isn’t whether your company should migrate its IT, but which services would benefit from migration, which ones should remain on-premises, and why. Both of these scenarios coexist in nearly every company we work with—and that’s precisely what’s known as a hybrid infrastructure, or a cloud hybrid.
Three things are decisive, and none of them has to do with architecture
Comparisons of providers come much later. What determines the answer is what your business cannot handle, what your contracts require, and what your current applications are capable of.
Where Your Data Has the Right to Be
Depending on your industry, certain data must remain in Switzerland or must not leave a specific country. A fiduciary file, a patient record, or a public contract may each impose different requirements, and these are not always apparent at the time of data transfer.
That requirement is non-negotiable.
The response time your business can tolerate
A production machine, a design workstation, or point-of-sale software responds within a thousandth of a second. Moving the server farther away from the user introduces a delay that goes unnoticed in email but can bring a production line to a halt.
The deadline is counted before, never after.
What your app provider agrees to support
An older line-of-business application is not always supported anywhere other than on the original server. While it is technically possible to move it, doing so without losing the vendor's support is not always possible.
Read the contract before moving.
Three situations, and all three are correct answers
All three of them work at similar companies. The third option is just as good as the other two, and a company that has never been offered the option of not moving anything should be surprised by this.
Most of it goes to Microsoft 365 and Azure
Email, files, collaboration tools, and some of the servers are hosted off-site. Only what needs to be on-site remains at the office.
- No more servers to renew every five years
- Employees work from wherever they want
- Expenses become monthly and easy to track
The right choice when your apps are up to date, your data isn't location-sensitive, and you have a reliable internet connection.
The two coexist on a long-term basis
Messaging and collaboration are moving out; business applications and regulated data are staying. Both parts share the same identity and access credentials.
- Each department is where it works best
- Industry requirements are met
- A Single Identity for Your Employees
The right answer when only part of your IT infrastructure can be moved—which is the most common scenario in French-speaking Switzerland.
Everything stays where it is, and that's justified
The infrastructure remains on your premises. The work, therefore, focuses on what makes it reliable: hardware replacement, backups, restoration, and remote access.
- Response time remains as short as possible
- The data never leaves the building
- No reliance on an internet connection
The right solution when your applications are tied to specific machines, when response time is critical, or when your existing hardware still has several years of life left.
A close-up of a migration line Azure is covered elsewhere
The technical inventory, server connections, the order of operations, and undoing actions are described on the page dedicated to Microsoft Azure. Deciding what to change comes first; figuring out how to do it comes second.
The migration to Microsoft AzureThe long-term cost of maintaining Situation 2
This is the part that doesn’t appear on any quote, and it’s the one you pay for every month. A company that maintains two separate systems ends up maintaining four of the same things. We mention this up front so that it’s a conscious choice.
Two directories that need to stay in sync
Your employees' accounts exist on both systems and are synchronized. When synchronization stops, no one notices until an employee's departure isn't reflected.
Two backups that need to be verified for restoration
Data hosted off-site isn't backed up the same way as data stored on your premises. Two devices, two attempts to restore service, and twice the time it takes.
An Internet connection that has become critical
As soon as part of the work is hosted externally, the connection is no longer just a convenience. Either you set up a backup connection, or you accept that work will come to a halt when it goes down.
Two Roles on the Same Team
Administering a server and administering a hosted service require different steps. A team of two people rarely manages to keep both up to date without help.
How We Do It
There are four steps, and the second one is the one that prevents a blanket decision. It generates one line per department, with a response for each one—including “don’t do anything.”
The length of downtime your business can withstand
Acceptable downtime, location-sensitive data, industry-specific requirements, and known deadlines: lease expiration, equipment replacement, and end of support for an application.
Inventory, Application by Application
Every application, every server, and every data stream gets its own entry: what it depends on, who uses it, what its publisher says, and how much it costs today.
It is this record that prevents us from moving everything because a certain department deserved it, or from keeping everything because a single person couldn't leave.
The target architecture, and what it costs to maintain
Identity, access, backup, bridging the two worlds, and restoration. The annual operating cost is calculated in the same way as the initial investment.
The migration, in waves
Services are released in coherent groups, never all at once. Each batch has its rollback prepared, and the previous configuration remains available until the batch is validated.
What You Need to Know Before Making a Decision
Four questions that come up in every project, along with our answers— even when they don’t go our way.
Is it cheaper?
Not necessarily. A server that has been fully depreciated—but whose hardware will last another three years—is often cheaper to keep than to replace with a monthly subscription service. The cost difference is calculated over the actual lifespan, not just the first year.
What really changes is the nature of the expense: an investment made every five years becomes a predictable monthly expense. This is a management decision first and foremost, rather than a technical one.
Will our data remain in Switzerland?
It depends on the service and how it's configured. Microsoft offers data centers in Switzerland for some of its services, and you choose the location when you set up the service—you can't change it later with a single click.
We verify this information on a service-by-service basis, directly at the source, before responding to you. This is one of the few areas where a vague answer can be costly.
How long does the company operate as a "double"?
Often longer than expected—and sometimes permanently. A business application that cannot be phased out keeps the local infrastructure in place—and thus its associated costs—until it is replaced.
We make this clear right from the start so that it’s accepted as a given. A sustainable hybrid situation is a perfectly defensible choice; a hybrid situation that’s imposed because a service was overlooked is not.
What if the right answer is not to move anything?
So we’re writing this down for you, and the work takes on a new form: ensuring the reliability of what already exists, replacing equipment at the right time, testing the system’s return to service, and properly setting up remote access.
This is a conclusion we reach on a regular basis. A service provider who can only offer one of the two options will always choose yours.
The questions that come with it
One infrastructure decision always leads to three others. Here are the ones that most often come up at the same time.
What We Do in Infrastructure
All of the department's operations: servers, networking, backup, identity management, and system administration. This is helpful for understanding the scope of our work.
MessagingEmail, often the first service to go
This is the service that stands to benefit the most from being hosted externally, and it's the one with which almost all projects begin.
DetailsAll the technologies we deploy
Fifty-five entries, with a search field. Use this when you're looking for a specific product rather than a general answer.
The hybrid approach also applies to artificial intelligence. From the interface and identity at Microsoft to sensitive documents and inference in your datacenter : the hybrid artificial intelligence page describes the boundary, and the comparison tool helps you define it.
Let's start with the report.
One line per department, with a response for each and the reason for that response. It is this document that makes the decision open to debate in the executive committee— including for departments that are not making any changes.
Three offices in French-speaking Switzerland: Renens, Sion , and Châtel-Saint-Denis. What we offer is the opportunity to meet the engineers who will do the work.
How long without this service?
Not “which technology” or “which provider.” How many hours can your business operate without each of these services, and what does each of those hours cost?
The answers fit on a single page, and they determine almost the entire architecture.