What is IT infrastructure?

IT infrastructure is composed of hardware components, like computers and servers, that rely on software components, like operating systems, to function. Working together, these components enable a wide range of IT services and capabilities.

IT resources are typically categorized in two groups: Hardware and software. Here’s a closer look at the characteristics of each.

• Hardware components: Hardware components form the bedrock of most IT infrastructure environments. Examples include simple network devices, like servers and routers, as well as more complex tools like data storage, firewalls and routers. End-user hardware components like computers and mobile devices allow employees to exchange data and services and share resources to meet an organization’s business needs.

• Software components: Software components allow IT operations teams to manage the critical resources that make up IT infrastructure. The OS, for example, is a software platform that enables important applications like content management systems (CMS), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) to function. IT infrastructure software applications are some of the most popular business applications in the world, including well-known examples like SAP, Salesforce, HubSpot and more.

Today, businesses primarily rely on two types of IT infrastructure: traditional and cloud. Traditional IT infrastructure is made up of hardware and software components that are kept on-premises, usually in an office building or data center, and reserved for private or company-only use.

However, cloud infrastructure is composed of compute resources that are delivered over the internet.

Until the early 2000s, traditional IT infrastructure environments dominated the tech landscape. However, as companies like AWS started to offer software solutions over the internet, cloud computing and cloud infrastructure became more popular. Cloud architectures offer far greater scalability and flexibility than traditional IT infrastructure, being a key enabler of newer technologies like AI, gen AI, machine learning (ML) and the Internet of Things (IoT).

While cloud infrastructure includes many of the same components as traditional IT infrastructures do, it relies heavily on a newer technology known as virtualization that traditional IT environments don’t support.

Virtualization is a technology that enables the creation of virtual environments from a single physical machine. Using software, virtualization builds an abstraction layer over hardware, dividing resources like processors, memory, networks and storage into multiple virtual machines (VMs). Each VM then runs its own operating system (OS) and behaves like a separate physical computer.

Key to cloud computing and cloud infrastructure, virtualization became popular in the 2000s as enterprises sought new ways to leverage technology and solve business problems at scale.

Virtualization plays a pivotal role in the deployment of cloud environments, allowing resources to be shared more efficiently. It was critical in the development of many new, cloud-based services that are now foundational to IT environments. Some examples include infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS) and hybrid cloud.

Introduced in 2011, a hybrid approach to cloud infrastructure sought to unify the various approaches companies had taken up to that point into a single, flexible, cost-optimal IT infrastructure. Hybrid cloud approaches prioritize agility, allowing companies to respond to changes in conditions instantly by using virtualization to rapidly provision compute resources as needed.

Hybrid cloud architectures divide infrastructure resources into three categories: on-premises, public cloud and private cloud.

• On-premises: Traditional IT infrastructure resources like hardware, software, data storage and other computing resources that are kept on site, typically in an office building or on-premises data center.

• Public cloud: Resources that are hosted by third-party cloud service providers (CSPs) and provided over the internet, such as servers, network devices and data storage.

• Private cloud: Virtualized infrastructure resources like PaaS and IaaS that are kept isolated and only available to a single customer.

According to a recent survey, the global hybrid cloud market is growing rapidly. It reached USD 125 billion in 2023 and is projected to expand to USD 558.6 billion by 2032.² Accelerated digital transformation and broad adoption of cloud services are driving this growth, providing businesses with enhanced scalability, cost reduction and operational flexibility.

Today, digital technologies that rely on IT infrastructure power nearly every aspect of business. From an individual employee’s work on a laptop or mobile device, to a networked manufacturing plant that relies on AI and IoT for automation, modern infrastructure improves communication, creates new efficiencies and helps drive innovation. Here are some of its most popular benefits.

Modern enterprises depend on IT infrastructure for most of their core business processes. From the manufacturing, storing and delivery of goods and services to securing data and resolving customer support issues, here are some of the most popular use cases.

For the last two decades, cloud computing—the delivery of compute resources and services over the internet—has become fundamental to many businesses. IT infrastructure plays a pivotal role in cloud computing, from network components that enable fast, secure internet connections to data storage solutions that allow applications to access critical data, and more.

IT infrastructure plays an important role in disaster recovery, helping enterprises restore business operations after an unexpected event. Cloud-based data storage, for example, can help restore sensitive data after a cyberattack or natural disaster, helping minimize downtime and get crucial systems back up and running.

Big data analytics, the processing and analysis of large amounts of data to extract insights, depends on specialized IT infrastructure components like Hadoop and Apache Spark to function. Advanced solutions even use AI and ML to automate tasks and speed insights when dealing with large datasets.

For example, AI-enhanced process mining—a data analysis technique that looks at event data from different systems to find new efficiencies—is dramatically improving IT operations, employee engagement and even customer satisfaction, according to a recent report by the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV).

DevOps teams have constantly relied on the newest, most advanced IT infrastructure solutions to shorten software development cycles and deliver cutting-edge applications. Today, cloud-enabled infrastructure helps improve real-time collaboration between developers, enhances processes, and can even automate certain aspects of the development process with the help of gen AI.

By using AI and ML, some IT infrastructure operations teams are developing new ways to automate tasks and streamline outdated processes. AI operations (AIOps), for example, uses natural language processing (NLP) along with ML models to analyze massive volumes of data generated by IT components and find opportunities for resource optimization.