Your IT infrastructure isn’t just a cog in the machine that is your business. It’s the central pillar of many of your day-to-day activities. From physical computers and routers to essential software, businesses rely on effective IT infrastructure management to stay up and running.
This guide explains why your IT infrastructure needs effective management and has a step-by-step guide, with handy tips, for streamlining this management. Let’s dive in.
What Is IT Infrastructure Management?
IT infrastructure management is how you oversee and maintain your business’s information technology. The overall IT infrastructure covers hardware and software along with networks and any other IT resources your company needs. IT infrastructure management is essential to your company’s technology risk mitigation and day-to-day running.
Some businesses have an entire IT infrastructure management team to handle each and every break and error that comes up. Other businesses have one IT employee, a jack of all trades who can fix everything from a blown fuse to a huge data loss. The expansive nature of IT infrastructure management means that, regardless of team size, processes need to be streamlined.
What’s Included in IT Infrastructure Management?
- Hardware: This covers your installing and maintaining physical devices such as:
- Servers
- Computers and laptops
- Network equipment
- Storage devices
- Software: Software management covers your operating systems and databases as well as any applications your business uses. This type of IT management includes:
- Software installation
- Patch management
- Managing licenses and subscriptions
- Ensuring software compliance
- In-house software development
- Data centers: Businesses use a range of data centers, each of which requires management and specific resources like storage systems and servers. Managing this includes disaster recovery and capacity planning as well as overall data security.
- Networks: Your business has an overall network infrastructure too, which covers its WiFi and routers along with any firewalls or network software.
- Security: IT infrastructure management teams are often tasked with security monitoring. This includes testing for potential security and data breaches and maintaining the overall security posture of the business’s key components.
The Benefits of Effective IT Infrastructure Management
1. Reliable, Well-Performing IT
Broken computers and unreliable networks aren’t just annoying, they actively hamper business. Ultimately, IT infrastructure managers are there to keep things up and running in a reliable manner.
Not only is well-managed IT more reliable, but it performs better too. Improving your IT management means that all your systems and applications will run faster and with fewer technical hiccups.
2. Improved Security
Data breaches? Cyber attacks? These words send a shiver down any business owner’s spine. Software and network infrastructure management means better security. Greenville IT support can help ensure that safeguards are in place to protect your systems and data.
No business wants a cyber attack. Customers don’t want it either. Improving your IT security doesn’t just benefit your business, it protects your customers and clients too. This means more trust from everyone, from staff to customers and stakeholders.
3. Cost Savings
It may come as no surprise that better managing your IT infrastructure will lead to cost savings. Whether it’s choosing the most cost-efficient network provider or ensuring optimal performance so you can streamline resource allocation, the money spent on IT infrastructure management processes is well worth it.
For example, managing your data storage space or cloud infrastructure carefully means you can keep an eye on how much storage or cloud space you’re actually using. That means no money wasted on unused storage space or cloud facilities that aren’t serving you.
4. Boost Productivity for All
A streamlined IT infrastructure management service means your IT team can be more productive. Less time spent dealing with tasks that can be automated. Less time wasted recovering data when it could have been stored in the cloud. The list goes on.
The productivity benefits don’t just affect your IT team. Streamlined IT management means that IT systems and software components can be better integrated across the company. This can save everyone’s time, as employees are using streamlined, well-integrated tools that fit their day-to-day work needs.
How to Streamline Your IT Infrastructure Management in 5 Steps
1. Standardize Your Existing Ware
While many businesses have a patchwork of different tools and devices, having standardized hardware and software configurations will considerably streamline your IT management team’s work and should be a key part of your business’s strategic enterprise architecture.
That means everyone uses the same type of hardware, and all software is standardized across different compu