What Is IT Infrastructure?
CEO of ITRenew and circular data center pioneer. getty  Following the Biden Administration's announcement of a $2.3 trillion federal plan to repair and enhance the nation's infrastructure, there's been a lot of debate about what exactly "infrastructure" means. Questions like these are timely ones for the data center industry. As advanced AI and machine-learning (ML) workloads call for massively increased storage capacity and processing power, many enterprises and data center operators are realizing that yesterday's approaches to IT infrastructure just aren't cutting it anymore. It's no longer enough to have the dollars and desire to upgrade and scale upward. You also need to have speed and agility. As a result, the traditional hardware-centric conception of infrastructure is losing its relevance. It's being superseded by a more holistic one that views hardware as a single piece  albeit still a very important one  of a much larger equation. That revised equation now accounts for factors like ease of deployment, sustainability and accessibility, all of which are integral to success in this new era of high-performance computing. And, in turn, that's changing what we mean when we talk about infrastructure. The French philosopher Voltaire once said, "If you wish to converse with me, define your terms." With that advice in mind, I'm proposing four different angles that can inform how we define the term IT infrastructure going forward. These might seem unconventional, especially when you compare them to traditional understandings of servers, racks, cables or switches. However, based on the trends that we're already seeing in the industry, they'll prove valuable to organizations that hope to remain competitive. Infrastructure Is About How Fast You Can Move  It's easy to associate physical hardware with the kind of complexity and weight that can hinder your agility as a business. But often it's the processes of procuring, deploying and eventually replacing that hardware that is even more cumbersome. IT solutions that are able to avoid legacy supply chain constraints can accelerate procurement and minimize planning cycles, but a steady supply of hardware and ample financial resources don't mean much if you can't get critical systems up and running quickly. To do so, organizations have typically had to hire massive teams of specialists or divert IT staff from other areas and retrain them to handle urgent new deployments. Fully integrated, turnkey solutions, engineered to plug and play, can radically reduce the time from order to implementation. Instead of redirecting in-house engineers or calling in armies of specialists, organizations can leverage their existing resources to roll out new hardware rapidly. That shrinks even large-scale deployments down to days (or even hours) and keeps busy IT staff focused on what drives value for the business. Infrastructure Is About Sustainability  Despite the growing emphasis on sustainable practices, there's still a tendency to think of them in terms of carbon offsets or blue Energy Star labels. This narrow focus limits our view of all the things that contribute to our cumulative environmental impact as well as the practical steps we can take to shrink it. What's more, it ignores the close relationship between environmental and financial sustainability. By sourcing equipment that avoids the mining of rare-earth metals, reducing e-waste through closed-loop supply chain models that empower circular economics and choosing gear that achieves higher performance from a more compact and efficient design, we can actually leverage infrastructure to limit our environmental footprint on multiple fronts. The bonus is that smaller footprint parlays into smaller CapEx and OpEx outlays as well. Infrastructure Is About Inclusivity  From a governmental standpoint, infrastructure expansion is often seen as a way to ensure that those living outside of metropolitan areas enjoy more equitable access to amenities like communications and transportation. In IT, the scenario isn't all that dissimilar. Without broader paths to the same standard of infrastructure as their counterparts that are in established technological or economic hubs, businesses in emerging markets or data centers at the edge remain at a competitive disadvantage. And the opposite is also true. When peripheral players can tap into cost-effective, open-source, high-performance solutions that allow them to operate on a more level playing field, they can truly unlock their full potential. Thinking of infrastructure along these lines reveals the many new opportunities not just for those who make use of more accessible solutions but those who provide them, too. Infrastructure Is About Optimization And Customization  You wouldn't want an eight-lane highway built in front of your house to replace a sidewalk. Nor would it make a lot of sense to install a series of playgrounds in an industrial zone. But when all you have is one-size-fits-all IT choices, you wind up with ill-fitting solutions that are overpowered or underpowered for your organization's needs. Even at the mainstream level, we're already starting to see next-generation technology stacks that are optimized on a per-customer and even per-workload basis. They're able to achieve this through a combination of modularity, open architecture and pre-configuration for specific use cases. The availability of these solutions enables organizations to conceive of IT infrastructure as something specific and individualized rather than abstract and generic. These perspectives are not prescriptive; they're suggestions. What they show is that there are multiple ways to approach the definition of IT infrastructure. Your organization's definition is going to differ even from your closest competitors and will likely take on different priorities over time. What's most important is having the conversation in the first place, because the process of defining your infrastructure will help you make informed, strategic choices when it comes to purchasing and deploying it. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives.