Managing an enterprise infrastructure stack has never been more complex. As emerging technologies force IT organizations to rapidly re-evaluate their cloud strategies, leaders are realizing that setting up infrastructure (Day 0 and Day 1) is only the beginning of the journey. The true IT value, resilience, and competitive edge come from how you manage and scale that environment over the long term—from Day 2 to Day N.
In a recent IDC Analyst Brief, sponsored by Broadcom, Jevin Jensen, Research Vice President of Infrastructure and Operations, outlines how specific capabilities in a modern infrastructure operations solution help organizations achieve vital business metrics across this entire lifecycle.
“Private clouds continue to be heavily leveraged to support business outcomes. IT leaders need an effective strategy to manage on-premises workloads effectively. Day 2 operations are necessary to deliver resilient applications, control costs, and meet security compliance requirements. Private clouds are getting a fresh look due to increased capabilities and the requirements of new workloads, such as AI.”1
— Jevin Jensen, IDC
The On-Premises Reality and the AI Demand
While hybrid and public cloud environments capture mainstream headlines, the data shows that local infrastructure remains the foundational core of enterprise operations, especially when it comes to cutting-edge tech.
Data Sovereignty for AI: Next-generation workloads are shifting infrastructure demands toward secure environments. As Jensen notes, “Many AI use cases require data privacy, which a private cloud AI ecosystem provides.”1
On-Premises Workloads: Approximately 88.8% of surveyed organizations’ total IT production transactions are still processed on-premises today.2
Driving Value Through Day 2 Operations
Setting up data center infrastructure is a brief milestone, but maintaining it securely is an ongoing effort. The Analyst Brief points to lifecycle management as a prime area for driving IT efficiency:
The Day 2 Differentiator: Managing an environment post-deployment is critical to overall IT agility. The brief highlights that “Day 2 operations can be a key differentiator in infrastructure effectiveness and competitive advantage.”1
Life-cycle orchestration: “Also called fleet management, this includes upgrading and patching datacenter infrastructure and virtualization components across the entire landscape, which can dramatically lower complexity and costs.”1
As companies work towards operational excellence highlighted in the IDC analyst brief, enterprises can look at VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). As a unified private cloud platform engineered for both existing systems and next-generation AI workloads, VCF transforms IT from tactical maintenance into a proactive, automated engine.
VCF Operations drives efficiency across the entire Day 0 to Day N lifecycle through four operational pillars:
Build: Simplifies infrastructure lifecycle management, live patching, parallel cluster upgrades, and pre-check validation for minimal downtime.
Manage: Centralizes fleet-wide control over licenses, security certificates, authentication providers, and Kubernetes cost tracking for consistency and scale.
Operate: Maximizes system uptime via real-time observability, deep diagnostics, and intuitive health dashboards for improved performance.
Protect: Hardens enterprise compliance posture through automated risk management, encryption monitoring, and built-in audit trails for enhanced infrastructure security.
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