Business IT infrastructure is evolving at a rapid pace. However, this can be a complex and expensive system. It can likewise be challenging to identify where inefficiencies are occurring and the overall impact of those inefficiencies. Therefore, it’s become crucial to streamline your business IT infrastructure.
Streamlining business IT infrastructure can help businesses reduce their costs and improve efficiency. The advancement of technology has made it possible to automate some tasks that used to take a lot of time.
That said, this article explains how to streamline your business IT infrastructure.
What Is Business IT Infrastructure?
Business IT infrastructure is the foundation of an organization’s information technology. It includes hardware, software, and storage that enable an enterprise to run its business. It culminates in business IT support, which is the core of every organization. The goal is simple: to provide supporting infrastructure and IT components needed to function and grow.
The complexity of business IT infrastructure is due to its systems and applications. These systems are interconnected and need to be managed efficiently. Moreover, the technicalities involved can make IT management more challenging.
Ways To Streamline Business IT infrastructure
To streamline and manage business IT infrastructure, it’s essential to have a process that’s easy to follow. But what happens when the process becomes too cumbersome? How can your company streamline IT processes without compromising efficiency?
To answer this question, below are seven ways to help your business manage IT infrastructure efficiently.
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Consolidate Your Networking Devices
The costs of owning a network of individual networking devices can add up quickly. Business owners typically spend an average of USD$5,000 per year on their networks. The cost to maintain and manage this network is also high—with companies spending an average of $3,200 per year just on IT maintenance.
Streamlining your business IT infrastructure can save you time and money by consolidating your networks into one device that’s easier to manage and more affordable to own than multiple individual networking devices. You can do this by identifying duplicate networks or migrating network assets to a new network.
You can also consolidate other devices, including laptops, desktops, tablets, smartphones, printers, and scanners. Each device has its unique set of software that needs to be installed to work correctly. But consolidating them means there’s no need for additional software installation or updates because everything is ready to go and in one place. Doing this improves efficiency.
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Streamline Network Configuration And Deployment
Network configuration and deployment can be a time-consuming process. It’s therefore essential to streamline this process and make it more efficient.
There are several ways that businesses can streamline the configuration and deployment of their networks. Some of these ways include automating the process with IT automation software, using virtualization technology to create a private cloud infrastructure, or using an on-demand IT service provider.
Streamlining network configuration and deployment for business IT can help your business save time and money in the long run.
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Streamline Application Usage And Licensing Management
When businesses start to adopt new technologies, they often get overwhelmed with the number of applications they need to manage. Thus, business owners need to streamline their application usage and licensing management to improve their business IT infrastructure.
You can streamline application usage and licensing management by implementing a single license across your entire organization or using application management systems (AMS). Doing this helps you manage applications and software licenses efficiently. It also helps you avoid wasting resources on unused software licenses, reducing IT costs, saving time, and increasing productivity.
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Implement A Cloud-Based Solution
There are a few ways to implement a cloud-based solution to streamline business IT infrastructure. For example, one way is to use the SaaS model.
Nowadays, most business models utilize Software as a Service (SaaS) for their IT infrastructure. Cloud software is accessible from any device, making it easier for employees to access and use it anywhere. This system also allows companies to quickly scale up or down according to their needs, which is helpful in case of an emergency or when the company grows rapidly.
The Infrastructure as a Model (IaaS) can be viewed as an extension of the SaaS model by allowing customers to rent servers and storage space in addition to software.
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Adopt A Data Center Management Strategy
Data centers are the backbone of any business, and they require a lot of power to stay up and running. But it’s not just about power consumption. Data centers also need to keep up with the ever-increasing demands for data storage, computing resources, and bandwidth.
Adopting a data center management strategy can help a company streamline operations using various technologies like virtualization, cloud computing, and automation. These strategies also help businesses reduce their carbon footprint by using renewable energy sources for data center operation.
As businesses adopt these strategies to run their data centers more efficiently, they find it easier to manage the entire IT infrastructure with less human intervention.
Some ways you can adopt a data center management strategy include:
- Having a clear idea of what drives your business and what you want from it
- Understanding how technology will help you achieve these goals
- Implementing an IT infrastructure that aligns with these priorities
- Creating clear policies, procedures, and guidelines for staff
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Streamline Data Security And Protection
Businesses need to be careful in protecting their data, especially with the recent data breaches. One way to protect your business is by using a security monitoring tool.
The most important thing about streamlining data security and protection for your IT business is determining the right level of security for your company. This will depend on the risk you’re willing to take and the costs involved.
There are many ways that businesses can streamline their data security and protection process, such as using a centralized firewall and network management tools.
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Stay Updated With Technology Trends
The use of technology is constantly increasing, and as a result, businesses are increasingly adopting new technologies. However, it can be challenging to keep up with the ever-changing technology landscape.
To stay updated with the latest trends in technology and streamline your business IT, you need to invest time in studying them. You also need to invest time in staying on top of what your clients are using so that you can provide them with the best service possible.
Conclusion
IT infrastructure is one of the most complicated areas in a business. Therefore, businesses must have a streamlined IT infrastructure to run their business efficiently. To streamline IT infrastructure, businesses should consider the abovementioned tips and techniques and stay committed to their applications.
