Main Trends in IT-infrastructure Management
The success of any company often depends on the productivity of its internal components. Each technological equipment, including office software, plays an important role in the business processes of each organization. A failure of one of these components can shut the business operation down and lead to “painful” and sometimes disastrous consequences for the business. Therefore, to calm your nerves from any extra stress, every entrepreneur must first solve the IT-infrastructure issue. He must take good care of the “physical condition” of his company, to study its inner side, so that in the future the system could function smoothly. One of the main tasks that the company has to solve is to regularly maintain a healthy state of business and to manage equipment that provides the functionality of the whole IT-infrastructure. Here there are main trends in the IT-infrastructure management, such as:
Cost Minimization and Optimization
It is worth noting that the entire financial performance of a company depends on optimizing IT costs. In a business environment, the concept of “optimization” is mistakenly perceived by many as “high costs”. But it is not true. Effective IT-infrastructure optimization primarily involves the wise usage of technology and the proper organizational connection with all components of the company. For example, a balance must be maintained between organizational and technical measures to ensure the protection of information data. After all, excessive investment in the protection of IT-systems of your company may not help if your employee can have a good opportunity to “leak” any information to third parties. Therefore, it is very important to take this issue very seriously and to equally apply both technical methods of information protection against possible data leakage as well as to solve organizational issues regarding this problem.
- Companies should direct their costs to provide:
- Uninterruptible power supply;
- Telecommunications network security;
- Licensed software:
- Stable storage system performance;
- Comfortable employment.
When choosing a reliable configuration of IT-assets of the company, you should take into account the price of company downtime. After all, this factor has a direct impact on the cost of maintaining the IT-infrastructure.
Effective IT-Asset Management
IT-asset management focuses on using technology to increase profits. This important component of the business allows you to get reliable information about resources and use them as efficiently as possible. Each company applies its own IT-asset management methods, but we have identified a number of the most common and important processes, such as procurement management, installation management, decommission and change management. As for IT-asset management solutions, they include the implementation of the following elements:
- Report and regular inventory;
- Analysis of all acquisition and maintenance costs;
- Plans for procurement of software and hardware;
- Monitoring the use of licensed software;
- Monitoring the implementation of warranty maintenance;
- IT-asset tracking.
IT-asset management is only one part of IT-management. It is very important to combine IT-asset management procedures with other popular management processes (for example, with ITSM – IT Service Management) to increase their efficiency.
Selection of Innovative Technologies
Today, one can hardly imagine IT-asset management without innovative technologies that dictate current trends. But before implementing them in business, we should weigh all the cons and pros of using these technologies. The main trends in this area are:
- Mobile devices and applications;
- Internet of Things (a system that connects real things to virtual network. It connects devices to the Internet and provides them with new features);
- Integrated ecosystems (devices that include software and hardware resources)
- Hybrid information technology and cloud computing;
- Personal cloud (technology that provides user access to data, settings, personal applications from any device anywhere in the world)
As you can see, the business today becomes more technological, more and more new tools and methods appear, which thereby complicate the company’s IT-infrastructure. Now the development of any business directly depends on the smooth functioning of all its IT-components. If earlier IT-systems only served to maintain the technological state of the business, then today they play a leading role in ensuring the development of the company. Therefore, each head of the organization must take the necessary measures to extend the life of his business and ensure the efficient and uninterrupted functionality of all its components.
