These days, optimization isn’t just a strategy—it’s a lifestyle.
We wake up with sleep scores and go to bed with step counts. We mind our macros and our mental. We perform AI-personalized workouts while listening to self-help podcasts sponsored by biohacking supplements. From Atomic Habits and “Inbox Zero” to Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to the latest viral morning routine, we’re surrounded by tools and philosophies promising to help us do more with less.
We’re a bit optimization obsessed, frankly, and understandably so. When it works, it really works. But as anyone who’s ever half-read a groundbreaking best seller or subscribed and forgotten to cancel the latest and greatest productivity app can attest, not all that glitters is gold.
Or, to borrow another popular aphorism, this time from Aesop’s Fables: “It is one thing to say that something should be done, but quite a different matter to do it.”
Making the Leap: Real World IT Optimization
The concept of optimization—maximizing efficiency, minimizing waste, and improving outcomes—has been in the ether for a while now, especially for businesses. The phrase “work smarter, not harder,” for example, is a tried-and-true, mainstream mantra.
However, IT optimization efforts, specifically around cloud costs and performance, have increased significantly in recent years. It’s a surge driven by a combination of factors, including economic pressures, technological advancements, and evolving business strategies. Chief among them being the precipitous rise in what it costs to manage and maintain modern IT infrastructure—not just in terms of dollars, but also time and expertise.
As a result, business leaders are understandably concerned over how to properly balance innovation, performance, and budgetary constraints. Not to mention that many organizations are finally realizing “cloud for cloud’s sake” isn’t a sustainable IT strategy and can, in fact, lead to technical debt, cost overruns, and crippling complexity.
It’s no wonder, then, that more and more IT managers and business decision makers are seeking smarter, more cost-effective ways to manage, modernize, and protect their data and applications. The only problem is, while optimization may be top of mind, the “how” of it all can be much harder to nail down. The road to optimization isn’t paved with good intentions. It doesn’t just appear like Beetlejuice because its name has been uttered three times on one quarterly business call. There’s no stumbling into it or getting lucky.
If every business knew exactly how to effectively optimize its operations, more would. Instead, we tend to water it down until it’s nothing more than a buzzword. Far too many organizations speak of optimization as if it were a critical OKR without properly accounting for, you know, the “KR.” Meaning, optimization is regularly mandated and yet rarely defined, leaving IT leaders and their teams—many of whom already feel unfairly maligned as non-revenue generating members of the business—with little actionable direction other than to cut costs.
The purpose of this blog is to push the platitudes aside. We want to move beyond the obvious—“IT optimization is important!”—and, instead, focus on a single, concrete strategy organizations can implement and achieve real-life results. So, let us make the leap toward true IT optimization together by maximizing two solutions in the 11:11 Systems wheelhouse: Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
Understanding DRaaS and IaaS
For decades, 11:11 Systems and our award-winning suite of solutions and services have ensured that customer applications and data remain continuously running, accessible, and protected. Our experience, expertise, and excellence in disaster recovery and cloud infrastructure are particularly strong, garnering industry-wide recognition for leadership and innovation.
Of course, both DRaaS and IaaS have long been powerful IT tools, allowing business leaders to more effectively manage, protect, and even optimize their environments. The pair are commonly linked, with DRaaS used as a precursor to cloud migration. However, what is often overlooked is how the natural progression from DRaaS to IaaS can also be used as a tool for IT optimization, providing a seamless path to reduce costs, enhance efficiency, and future-proof operations.
At 11:11, we view DRaaS as much more than a data safety net—it’s also the gateway to building a more flexible, efficient, and resilient IT infrastructure in the cloud. To that end, we’ve helped numerous organizations leverage their DRaaS solutions, particularly 11:11 DRaaS for Zerto, as a jumping off point for optimizing IT operations and costs.
If you’re already the beneficiary of HPE Zerto-powered DRaaS or if you’re at all interested in re-evaluating your cloud strategy in unison with disaster recovery and business continuity efforts, you’re just one step away from unlocking even greater operational efficiency. So, let’s explore how extending your DRaaS into IaaS can help eliminate infrastructure headaches, facilitate smooth migrations, and save costs, all while setting the foundation for a more resilient, optimized IT environment.
What is DRaaS?
In today’s fast-paced, global IT environment, downtime is not an option.
Whether it’s malicious or merely accidental, mother nature or human nature, a single disaster event can wreak havoc on your business. Unfortunately, as the volume and value of our data continues to increase, so will such threats. Working with an expert disaster recovery provider is the best way to prevent downtime and avoid potentially irrecoverable damage in terms of revenue loss, customer churn, or damage to your reputation.
DRaaS ensures that your mission-critical applications and data remain operational during unplanned outages or disasters. It automates failover processes, enabling businesses to recover quickly and with minimal downtime. DRaaS also eliminates the need for costly secondary sites by replicating IT environments to the cloud.
Key Features of DRaaS:
- Automated failover and failback
- Data replication to geographically diverse cloud regions
- Rapid recovery times for minimal disruption (RTO/RPO optimization)
- Scalable to match business continuity needs
What is IaaS?
Traditionally speaking, IaaS provides businesses with cloud-based infrastructure, such as servers, storage, and networking, on a pay-as-you-go basis. By strategically moving IT workloads to the cloud, businesses can then reduce hardware costs and focus their efforts on core operations.
It is not hyperbolic to say that adopting the right cloud strategy is one of the most consequential decisions facing technical leaders today. In recent years, enterprise adoption of the cloud has grown rapidly as organizations aim to modernize IT, improve scalability, reduce downtime, and bring new innovations to market more quickly than ever. Meaning, the cloud is no longer a leap into the unknown. While most enterprises have shifted toward cloud-first models, the complexity of cloud options and the imperative to align deployments with business goals requires a smarter, more nuanced approach.
For CIOs and technology leaders, the challenge has evolved from “Should we adopt the cloud?” to “How do we optimize cloud costs, remain agile, keep our enterprise protected, with the right cloud technology as part of our IT stack?” Today, success hinges on moving beyond cloud-first thinking to becoming cloud smart: choosing, integrating, and scaling the right mix of cloud services to meet your unique business goals.
Key Features of IaaS:
- On-demand computing resources
- Scalability to accommodate workload increases
- Infrastructure automation for streamlined management
- Enhanced operational flexibility
The Natural Progression from DRaaS to IaaS
DRaaS as a Gateway to IaaS
For many organizations, utilizing DRaaS is the first step toward exploring cloud-based solutions. Businesses often validate the cloud’s reliability and scalability during disaster recovery scenarios. Once confidence is established, transitioning to an IaaS production environment feels like a natural progression.
Eliminate the Secondary Site
Traditional on-premises disaster recovery solutions require secondary data centers, which are expensive to maintain. These facilities come with operational costs such as hardware procurement, staffing, and licensing. By extending DRaaS into IaaS, businesses can decommission these secondary sites and eliminate these burdens entirely.
Test Before You Commit
With 11:11 DRaaS for Zerto, businesses can confidently assess their environment’s compatibility before committing to a full production migration. This “try-before-you-buy” approach reduces risk and ensures a smooth transition to IaaS.
Migrating Seamlessly with Zerto and 11:11 Systems
Facilitating a Smooth Transition
Zerto’s industry-leading replication and failover technology play a critical role in supporting seamless migrations. Zerto enables planned migrations by replicating virtual machines (VMs) to the cloud in real-time, allowing IT teams to validate performance before committing to a complete handoff.
Key Benefits of Migrating with Zerto and 11:11 Systems:
- Minimal downtime during migration
- Controlled handoff into the production environment
- Reduced risks of unexpected errors
- Full compatibility with 11:11’s resilient production environment
Run Entirely in the Cloud
During a Zerto-enabled migration, failover to 11:11 Systems’ production environment can happen without reverting back to on-premises infrastructure. Customers who transition in this way often choose to remain with 11:11 as their IaaS provider permanently, benefiting from reduced infrastructure management and lower costs.
Cost Savings and Operational Efficiency
Lower Infrastructure Costs
Transitioning from expensive, on-premises secondary sites to cloud-based IaaS significantly reduces overhead costs. With 11:11, you can eliminate expenses associated with maintenance, new hardware purchases, and energy consumption.
Consolidated Licensing
High licensing fees, especially with changes like VMware’s licensing model, have made on-premises infrastructure increasingly challenging. Extending DRaaS into IaaS sidesteps these issues by consolidating costs through a single provider like 11:11 Systems.
Be Cloud Smart, Migrate Now
Implementing DRaaS is just the beginning. Making the leap from DRaaS to IaaS allows you to adopt a “cloud smart” strategy. Instead of waiting years for hardware depreciation or existing contracts to expire, IT leaders can optimize their budget immediately by retiring expensive data centers and moving to an IaaS environment.
Your Future Production Environment
With 11:11, your DR environment isn’t just for emergencies. It’s built to be a robust, scalable production platform, eliminating concerns about reliability and enabling you to pivot from recovery to innovation effortlessly.
Addressing Concerns and Misconceptions
What’s Holding Businesses Back?
For many organizations, barriers to IaaS migration include sunk costs in hardware, remaining data center contracts, or fear of complexity. These factors often keep businesses tethered to on-premises solutions longer than necessary.
Aligning the Stars for Migration
Successful cloud migration doesn’t require everything to align perfectly. Businesses can take small, measured steps, starting with DRaaS. By retiring one cost center at a time, such as duplicative facilities, customers can gradually adopt IaaS production environments in stages, maximizing ROI at each step.
Optimize Today: Why Now Is the Right Time to Be Cloud Smart
The current IT landscape presents a unique opportunity. Rising costs and evolving licensing models make now the ideal time to adopt a cloud smart strategy. Making the jump from DRaaS to IaaS allows businesses to optimize their budgets, simplify operations, and gain a competitive edge. Take the first step toward a more efficient, cost-effective future. At 11:11 Systems, we’re here to guide you every step of the way.
Talk with our experts today and see how seamless your transition can be.
Contact us to explore your DRaaS-to-IaaS potential with 11:11 Systems.
