Small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) have historically been restricted in what can be done with technology infrastructures. However, there are now options that an SMB can leverage that enable it to accomplish more with their infrastructure, but this requires the SMB to have a plan in place.
What Is Your IT Infrastructure?
In short, your IT infrastructure is everything that contributes to your business’s ability to store and use the data it has collected – including your network, your storage system, as well as the hardware and software solutions used to access them. In other words, it’s the backbone of your business, supporting your operations, and allowing data to be transported where it needs to go.
It should go without saying that your IT infrastructure is a critical consideration for your business’s success. This means that you will need to dedicate time and energy to devise a strategy for your IT infrastructure to follow.
Determining Your IT Infrastructure Strategy
In order to be optimal for your business’s needs, your revised infrastructure strategy should touch on a few best practices.
Simplification
As you’ve needed to improve your infrastructure, it’s likely that it has grown based on the individual needs it had at the time. As a result, there’s a good chance that your IT infrastructure has a mix of technologies in it, which makes it harder to improve and update it later.
When designing your new infrastructure, you should leverage the modern standardization of software and integrations to create a centralized platform that enables data to be utilized across the business. This will help to simplify your IT and improve your workplace experience, often providing more functionality and flexibility for your users.
Flexibility
Speaking of flexibility, information technology is always adapting, which means that your IT infrastructure needs to be able to accommodate these changes. Considering your current infrastructure, ask yourself where your biggest speed constraints are, and how they can be rectified. Furthermore, are there any ways that you can consolidate your existing system to further limit your risks while advancing your processes?
Service-Focused
When you really consider it, your IT provides a service to your operations, in that it enables them to happen. While this may be a simplistic view of it, it isn’t any less true. When designing your infrastructure, you need to keep in mind that it will be providing your entire business with the tools that it needs to function. Consider what you need your infrastructure to do now, and what you will need it to do in the future, and plan it accordingly.
Why You Should Consider a Managed IT Infrastructure
I want you to think back to the beginning of your business, when it was just you and maybe one or two other people. You may have had a hand in setting up your network back then, so why not do the same again now? Well, there are a few reasons.
First of all, consider your responsibilities. With any luck, your attention is commanded by the duties of your position. Can you say you have the time to properly strategize your infrastructure, let alone maintain it? Secondly, there is no denying that technology has changed. Would you rather tackle it yourself, potentially creating an issue, or would you rather entrust someone with experience to take care of your organization’s infrastructure?
CTN Solutions can manage your infrastructure on your behalf, ensuring that it is optimized to your particular requirements so that your efficiency can be improved. Reach out to us at (610) 828- 5500 to learn more.