Which methodology should a multinational corporation adopt to standardize and automate the IT infrastructure setup across its various branches?

The chosen answer, "Infrastructure as code," is the most suitable methodology for a multinational corporation aiming to standardize and automate its IT infrastructure setup across various branches. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) enables the management of infrastructure through machine-readable definition files, rather than physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools. This approach allows for the automation of the entire infrastructure setup process, ensuring consistency and reducing the potential for human error.

By defining the infrastructure in code, teams can easily replicate environments across different locations, ensuring that all branches are utilizing the same configurations and standards. This significantly accelerates deployment times and enables rapid scaling of IT resources, which is crucial for a corporation operating in multiple regions.

In contrast, while virtualization provides a means to emulate hardware environments and can improve resource utilization and management, it does not inherently ensure standardization and automation of infrastructure setup across various branches. Virtualization tools might be part of an IaC implementation but do not directly address the requirement for standardized setups.

DevOps practices encompass a range of methodologies and cultural changes that emphasize collaboration and integration between software development and IT operations teams. While adoption of DevOps could enhance efficiency and responsiveness in IT operations, it does not specifically target the issues of infrastructure automation and standardization across multiple locations as effectively