You face the difficult task of designing the expansive and scalable infrastructure that supports many of your new customer-facing systems of engagement and their associated analytics. Do not fall back on the same infrastructure elements you used to implement your legacy back-office environments. Many infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals do, having spent years simplifying and standardizing their enterprise infrastructure. The pressure to implement quickly can result in missed opportunities to improve both capital efficiency and operating expense (opex) by optimizing your server and storage infrastructure for your specific workloads. This report outlines of Forrester's solution for I&O professionals working on infrastructure transformation and discusses when you should consider application-specific infrastructure; develops a framework for evaluating the decision; and outlines commercially viable options. We also cover emerging options for the mid-term (two- to five-year) planning horizon.