How To Get Cloud Infrastructure Modernization Right

Cloud infrastructure modernization is a steady shift in how you build, secure and scale the systems that keep your business running.

Most IT teams know the pain of working around outdated tools. Slow rollouts, patchwork fixes and complex handoffs get in the way of new ideas. When customers expect everything to load fast and work flawlessly across regions, platforms and time zones, old approaches fall short.

Your team needs to move at the pace of change. That means clearing out friction, tightening up security and laying groundwork for growth. The shift doesn’t happen overnight, but the payoff is real: fewer outages, smoother operations and the freedom to say yes to what’s next.

Understanding where you stand is the first step. In the sections ahead, you’ll see what sets modern cloud infrastructure apart, why regular modernization matters and how to clear common roadblocks. Keep reading to get practical context and steps to help your team build a cloud environment that fits today (and tomorrow).

Understanding modern cloud infrastructure

Cloud infrastructure does a lot of heavy lifting behind the scenes. It makes sure your services stay up and your data always has a place to land. For most teams, it’s a mix of physical and virtual resources — a setup built to change as your needs grow.

What is cloud infrastructure?

At its core, cloud infrastructure is a collection of servers, storage and network tools working together. Some parts run in your own data center. Others might be hosted on public cloud platforms. What ties them together is how you manage and connect them.

Modern platforms like SUSE Rancher Prime make this integration seamless, whether you’re running workloads on-premises, in the cloud or across hybrid environments.

For instance, you can add more resources on busy days or scale down when things quiet down. And launching a new app doesn’t mean waiting for hardware. Updates are handled with a few clicks, not overnight maintenance. The right setup gives you the freedom to get work done without calling IT for every small request.

When cloud infrastructure gets out of the way, your team can move quickly and adapt, whether you’re building a new tool or keeping a critical system steady.

Public vs private vs hybrid cloud

Every organization handles cloud infrastructure a little differently. Some keep everything in-house with private cloud setups, using their own hardware managed by their own teams. This option offers control and helps meet strict security or compliance needs.

Others take advantage of public cloud services run by providers like AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. Here, you rent what you need, scale quickly and skip the costs of owning hardware.

Most teams land somewhere in between. Hybrid cloud joins both worlds. You can run sensitive workloads on private systems then spin up extra capacity in the public cloud when needed. This kind of flexibility allows you to balance control, speed and cost without locking yourself into a single way of working.

What are the benefits of cloud infrastructure?

A strong cloud infrastructure makes life easier for IT teams and the rest of the business. You can respond faster when requests come in, test ideas with minimal risk and scale smoothly as user demand changes.

Automated tools streamline routine work. Resources are available on demand, so projects don’t stall out waiting for capacity. Built-in backups and recovery options help protect data, while access controls keep critical systems secure.

In the end, the real benefit is choice. With cloud infrastructure in place, you decide how to support growth, where to run workloads and how to adjust when priorities shift.

How are cloud infrastructure and cloud architecture different?

Cloud infrastructure is the underlying hardware and virtual resources — the nuts and bolts. Think servers, storage and network connections.

Cloud architecture is the way you put those pieces together. It covers how systems talk to each other, where workloads live, how data moves and what security controls are in place.

Infrastructure gives you the tools; architecture is your blueprint for using them. When both are well planned, you get a stable environment that’s easy to expand, secure and keep running — no matter what the future brings.

Why is cloud infrastructure modernization important?

Cloud infrastructure ages faster than most teams realize. What worked perfectly two years ago might be costing you money, slowing down deployments or leaving security gaps you can’t see.

The cloud providers keep adding new services and retiring old ones. Security threats change daily. Your business grows, your traffic patterns shift and your team builds different types of applications. Standing still means falling behind — and the consequences show up in three critical areas.

Staying ahead of security risks

First, there’s the security challenge that keeps getting worse. Older cloud setups often run outdated versions of everything: operating systems, databases, networking tools. Each outdated component creates potential entry points for attackers.

Building secure cloud infrastructure from the ground up prevents these vulnerabilities from accumulating over time. Modern cloud infrastructure includes built-in security features that weren’t available when you built your current setup.

Beyond immediate threats, new compliance requirements pop up regularly. GDPR was just the beginning. Industry-specific regulations keep tightening. So, your infrastructure needs to adapt to these changes without breaking existing systems.

Controlling costs that creep up

Then there’s the money factor that sneaks up on teams. Legacy cloud infrastructure often wastes money in ways you don’t notice at first. For example, reserved instances bought for last year’s usage patterns, storage that never gets deleted and redundant services running in multiple regions because nobody remembers why they were set up.

Modern cloud tools give you better visibility into what you’re spending and why. Automated scaling prevents you from paying for resources you’re not using. Updated monitoring also helps you spot expensive mistakes before they compound.

Supporting business growth

But the biggest impact hits your team’s ability to move fast. When your infrastructure can’t keep up with demand, it turns into a bottleneck. As a result, slow deployments delay product launches. Rigid systems stand in the way and prevent you from trying new approaches. On top of that, outdated tools make it harder to hire developers who want to work with current technology.

Cloud infrastructure modernization gives your team room to grow. New features roll out faster. Testing becomes easier. Scaling happens automatically instead of requiring manual intervention in the middle of the night.

Avoiding expensive emergency fixes

All these problems compound when you wait too long to address them. The real cost of skipping modernization shows up during crises. When your old systems fail, you’re fixing problems under pressure instead of preventing them systematically. Emergency migrations cost more than planned upgrades. Plus, downtime during peak business hours costs more than scheduled maintenance.

That’s why teams that modernize regularly avoid these preventable issues. They catch problems early, when fixes are cheap and schedules are flexible.

What does the modernization of cloud infrastructure involve?

IT infrastructure modernization means updating every layer of your tech stack systematically. Here’s how to approach the work:

• Map what you have: List all your applications and their dependencies. Check which ones still receive security updates and which ones cause support tickets every month. Document what everything costs and identify the systems that make your team nervous.
• Prioritize your app migrations: Start with applications that are easy to move but cause the most problems. Leave mission-critical systems that work well for later phases. When you rebuild apps, break them into smaller services that your team can update independently.
• Modernize your infrastructure layer by layer: Replace manual server management with containerized workloads. Switch from managing your own databases to cloud services that handle patches and backups automatically. Set up infrastructure-as-code so changes are consistent and repeatable.
• Build security into everything: Implement zero-trust networking where every connection requires verification. Enable automatic encryption for data storage and transfers. Set up vulnerability scanning that triggers alerts when problems are found.
• Automate operations: Create deployment pipelines that move code from development to production without manual steps. Set up monitoring that can resolve common issues automatically. Schedule regular disaster recovery tests and make failover procedures automatic.

Challenges to cloud and infrastructure modernization

Cloud infrastructure modernization sounds simple on paper, but the reality is messier. Teams face obstacles that can slow down or derail their modernization efforts. Here are the most common challenges and why they’re so difficult to overcome.

Legacy system dependencies

Your existing systems weren’t built to be easily replaced. Over the years, applications have become tightly connected to each other and to specific infrastructure components. Changing one piece can break something else entirely.

The problem gets worse when teams discover undocumented dependencies. That old database might feed data to six different applications, but nobody wrote down which ones. Or the security system might depend on a service that’s running on a server everyone forgot about.

Budget constraints and hidden costs

Modernization projects commonly cost more than expected. Initial estimates often focus on obvious expenses, such as new software licenses and cloud services, but overlook the hidden costs that can add up quickly.

Teams need training on new tools. Data migration takes longer than planned. Old systems need to run alongside new ones during the transition, doubling hosting costs. When problems arise, bringing in outside experts costs more than internal resources.

Skills gaps in the team

Modern cloud infrastructure requires different skills than traditional IT management. Your team might be experts at managing servers but struggle with containerization, infrastructure-as-code or cloud-native security models.

Finding people with the right skills is expensive and time-consuming. Training existing team members takes months, and they need time to practice without breaking production systems. Meanwhile, the modernization project sits on hold.

Fear of downtime and disruption

Business leaders worry about what happens if the modernization goes wrong. Downtime during business hours costs money and frustrates customers. Even short outages can damage relationships that took years to build.

This fear leads to over-cautious planning and endless delays. Teams spend months creating detailed rollback plans and testing procedures, but still hesitate to pull the trigger on major changes.

Organizational resistance

Different departments have different priorities. The development team wants modern tools and faster deployments. The operations team values stability and predictability. The finance team questions why the current system needs to change if it’s working.

Getting everyone aligned on modernization goals requires time and political skill. Without buy-in from across the organization, projects stall when competing priorities emerge.

The benefits of cloud infrastructure modernization

When teams push through the obstacles, the tangible gains start to show fast. These aren’t just checkboxes for IT; each benefit ripples through the business in measurable ways.

Faster releases, happier teams

Cloud modernization removes the old bottlenecks that slow down projects. With automation in place, deploying a new feature or bug fix becomes part of the daily flow, not a risky, after-hours scramble. A payments company used to schedule releases at midnight and hope nothing broke; after modernizing, their developers ship updates during the workday and spend less time battling outdated scripts.

Lower, predictable costs

Modern setups shrink the line items that used to balloon unpredictably. Scaling up during peak sales doesn’t mean overpaying for idle hardware the rest of the year. For instance, when retail demand spikes ahead of a holiday, costs scale up briefly, then drop back down automatically, so finance doesn’t get surprised when the next invoice arrives.

Fewer outages, stronger customer trust

Reliable cloud infrastructure builds trust. The number of surprise outages drops, so teams spend less time firefighting and more time improving the product. One software provider saw major incident calls drop by two-thirds after swapping legacy hardware for managed cloud services; customers noticed, too, sticking around longer and churning less.

Security that’s part of the process

Built-in security becomes a living part of the day-to-day, not a last-minute patch. Patching critical vulnerabilities is routine, not a special project. After moving to automated patch deployment, a healthcare company cut its exposure window from weeks to hours, keeping sensitive data much better protected.

Easier scaling up and down

Growth gets simpler. Launching a new app or meeting a sudden spike in users doesn’t require begging for more hardware or rewriting big chunks of code. A fast-growing SaaS startup went from waiting weeks for new environments to spinning them up in minutes, so new features reach users much sooner, and experiments don’t slow down the whole team.

Cloud infrastructure modernization & SUSE

Cloud infrastructure modernization works best when it’s woven into your team’s routine (not put off until things break). The real value comes in the details: one manual handoff turned automatic, one release that takes an hour instead of a weekend, one issue fixed before it grows. These small moves set up bigger gains down the line.

Instead of trying to overhaul everything, look for the bottlenecks that slow your team down today. Maybe rollouts drag or costs jump between quarters. Once you fix those trouble spots, momentum builds, making the next improvement easier.

If you want to see Modernization without limits, SUSE Rancher Prime and Virtualization can expedite your journey automating containers and VMs alongside each other.  Request a SUSE demo and get a closer look at how practical cloud infrastructure modernization ties directly to your business goals.

To learn more, watch our on-demand webinar, Achieve up to 258% ROI for Hybrid IT, on SUSE.com.