As countless companies have learned, there are no magical elixirs when it comes to enterprise computing, no singular platform or cloud that can address every need.

Take Money Mart, for instance. Wanting to offer an omnichannel customer experience and get out of the data center management business, the financial services leader faced some stark realities when it shifted all of its IT resources to the cloud.

"Putting everything in the cloud was a learning experience," admits Awan Sikri, CTO at Money Mart. "We learned some applications, like our core transaction platform, should remain on-premises in a private cloud, but with tie-ins to the public cloud. We also learned cloud-based storage is very expensive, and we have a lot of data. So it became clear that a hybrid cloud model would be the key."

Money Mart certainly isn't alone in its desire to increase IT-driven business enablement while simultaneously reducing IT complexity and cost. But with computing resources distributed among data center, cloud, branch office, and edge environments, many companies are going in the wrong direction.

They have more technology silos to manage, more specialized skills to hire, more strain on their limited budgets, and more finger pointing when something goes wrong.

While there are no magical answers, there are tools that can bring together IT silos, teams, and operations. Tools like Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service, Cisco Intersight Workload Optimizer, and Cisco AppDynamics provide visibility, orchestration, and automation across hybrid cloud environments and workloads. And they include support for a broad ecosystem of third-party solutions.

A singular, shared view of all technology resources and a common, policy-based framework for managing them are the keys to an effective hybrid IT model. One that drives down complexity and cost. One that increases business speed and agility. And one that lays the foundation for hands-free IT.

After their initial foray into the cloud, Money Mart has successfully shifted to a hybrid model. Their technology stack is now fully integrated and connects seamlessly with multiple public clouds. Their physical, virtual, and cloud resources are now managed from a single pane of glass. And the company expects to save more than$3.5 million in OpEx over the next three years as a result.

To learn more about Money Mart's data center modernization and push for hands-free IT, read the full case study.

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