Did you know 94% of C-suite executives believe legacy infrastructure is hampering business innovation and agility? Rapidly evolving modernization and the proliferation of technology models and versions make it challenging for organizations to upgrade and maintain their IT infrastructure.
69% of currently active hardware will no longer be supported by 2027.
IT infrastructure management is essential for keeping IT assets updated and maintained. Still, obstacles like inconsistent lifecycle patterns, error-prone license renewals, prolonged ticket resolution times, and security breaches can disrupt operations. So, how can your organization overcome these challenges? The answer lies in implementing effective lifecycle strategies to modernize IT infrastructure, leading to enhanced services and cost optimization.
IT infrastructure: Importance, components, and types
IT or technology infrastructure provides technical support for organizations to run operations efficiently. It is an interconnected component of hardware, software, networks, and services necessary to manage the company’s IT resources.
Organizations rely on IT infrastructure to facilitate data processing, storage, networking, security protocols, and more. IT infrastructure is a backbone for organizations’ technological operations, from communications between departments to increasing user productivity and meeting operational goals.
With efficient IT infrastructure management, organizations perform better and adopt the latest technologies better suited to their needs, helping them survive in complex environments and remain competitive.
Suppose an IT system crashes, halting office operations. Upon audit, an unexpected server breakdown caused interruptions in daily workflows. Robust IT infrastructure components are necessary to support operational workflows. Let’s understand each component and how it plays an important role in the organization.
Traditional vs. Modern IT Infrastructure Components
Traditional IT infrastructure is mostly on-premise, where organizations maintain their network, servers, and databases. This requires substantial physical space for updates and maintenance.
Software development follows a waterfall model approach, where development is done in stages. Once the first stage is deployed, the next stage can begin. This is why releases and testing were less frequent and time-consuming due to slower release cycles. Data storage was also structured and stored in relational databases, resulting in delayed information updates.
Alternatively, modern IT infrastructure focuses on adapting cloud-based solutions. Organizations can benefit from flexibility and scalability by expanding or downsizing based on market demand and only paying for actual cloud usage.
Similarly, software development uses Agile and DevOps methods and testing practices for iterative development, resulting in faster release cycles and updates. For data storage, structured and unstructured data can be stored and analyzed real-time for quick decision-making.
Here are a mix of traditional and modern IT infrastructure components:
1. Physical infrastructure
Hardware assets are physical devices such as personal or portable computers, networking and application processing servers, storage devices, and peripherals. These assets provide the physical infrastructure necessary to support or run other applications. IT teams follow and implement strict hardware lifecycle processes that ensure hardware assets perform well without unexpected breakdowns.
2. On-prem, cloud, or hybrid software applications
Software assets are another integral part of the IT infrastructure. Organizations choose different types of software – on-prem, cloud, or hybrid based on their specific needs. For example, finance organizations dedicated to maintaining strict security measures adopt on-prem private databases to secure their confidential financial information.
Similarly, non-profit organizations aiming to cut costs rely on cloud-based operating systems, and most organizations adopt hybrid models as per their requirements.
For example, an IT asset management solution can help non-profit organizations track, manage, and analyze IT assets effectively. Since these assets are business-critical, IT teams must ensure they regularly update software applications to the latest versions and comply with licensing requirements with the help of the software.
3. Information exchange via networking devices
Networking devices allow rapid information exchange between connecting devices and applications for frictionless communications; for example, local or wide area networks are connected via switches or routers for inter-departmental or cross-country communications.
These devices are integral to maintaining secure data communication within the organization. Most organizations use an intranet – a secure and private network that keeps data confidential and accessible among employees.
4. Safe and secure data centers
Consider data centers like warehouses. They facilitate house services, storage systems, and networking equipment. Because these are physical facilities, you can ensure the availability of the company’s IT assets for optimizing operations.
For example, a pharmaceutical company can easily store and research clinical trial data in data centers to quickly access the required information.
IT teams continuously update data backup and storage systems to keep company information protected from unauthorized access.
5. Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS)
Organizations can use Infrastructure as a Service to access storage, networks, servers, and more on the cloud. It is an attractive cloud-based platform that can be accessed and paid per organizational needs and demands. Organizations can easily rent infrastructure resources from cloud service providers without the hassle of procuring and maintaining their IT infrastructure.
6. AI stack or infrastructure
Artificial intelligence is essential to business data analysis, insights, and automation. Organizations adopt AI stack-integrated hardware and software environments that support AI workloads to reap the benefits. These environments facilitate developers’ deployment of AI applications like OpenAI’s Chat GPT, computer vision, etc.
5 strategies to improve your IT infrastructure landscape
1. Plan and outline modernization strategy
This is the first step in planning how to modernize your IT infrastructure. An in-depth analysis of your existing IT landscape can help you draft strategies for implementing the change.
Is your hardware nearing the end of its useful life? If so, the first step is to evaluate the current infrastructure. This includes network performance analysis, asset lifecycle, software capability, and system efficiency. You need to thoroughly assess the weak points within the current infrastructure and pinpoint the redundancies that need improvements.
Start by integrating legacy systems with infrastructure updates. Then, modernize the entire system after analyzing the level of impact it had on overall operations. For example, the sales team uses cloud-based analytics to assess performance metrics. Based on the desired result of quick analysis and decision-making, the same tool can be used in other departments to analyze their specific performance indicators.
2. Leverage cutting-edge technologies
After identifying the gaps and inefficiencies, new solutions need to be implemented. These can include upgrading systems, adopting new cloud services, or integrating different types of asset management software tools for better performance.
With evolving technological advancements, organizations must implement solutions that support cutting-edge technologies such as AI and machine learning, edge computing, the Internet of Things, and other required tools.
For example, multi-location-based organizations with remote employees and various cloud platforms would consider shifting to secure access edge architectures (SASE) for high network performance and low latency rates.
3. Focus and prioritize security measures
In today’s diverse cyberthreat practices, it is necessary for organizations to implement stronger security protocols with the help of infrastructure modernization.
Protect your IT infrastructure with zero-trust frameworks, next-generation firewalls, or platform-based security approaches. Legacy infrastructure with strong security protection after upgrades must be kept. However, hardware or software with known vulnerabilities must be immediately replaced to avoid security breaches.
4. Test desired outcomes before implementation
It is important to test new technologies to ensure they function properly and fit your business model well. Create multiple scenarios and apply these scenarios in testing environments to predict all high or low-risk possibilities of problems arising. Set a desired result for each scenario, and if all criteria are met, then implement the new solution in the production environment for end-user use.
5. Analyze, improve, and succeed
Implementing IT infrastructure solutions and tools alone is not enough—you need to monitor the system continuously. This will allow you to reduce any escalating issues, track system performance, manage the network, and detect potential cyber threats.
Real-time data analysis of key metrics and asset reports helps streamline data flow and ensure a safety net for the infrastructure.
How to implement effective IT infrastructure management?
Organizations are interested in keeping all IT infrastructure systems, services, and components working to the maximum capacity. However, a lot is going on between these components and services. If one component is out of order, it will impact the performance of the other IT assets (just like a domino effect). Therefore, IT infrastructure management is a handy solution. The aim is to maintain productivity and reduce the downtime to a bare minimum. There are three types of infrastructure management methods :
- Systems management – involves update installation, system performance monitoring, and managing the accounts.
- Network management – involves configuring network devices, monitoring traffic, and troubleshooting connectivity issues.
- Storage management – involves backup and recovery tasks, capacity planning, and storage performance.
To ensure IT infrastructure management is well in place, here are a few strategies to follow:
1. IT infrastructure monitoring
The process of tracking, analyzing, and managing the performance of a company’s tech stack is known as infrastructure monitoring. Every component, from memory chips to operating systems, plays a crucial role for end-users. Monitoring the components is easy and necessary with a reliable IT asset management system. By monitoring IT infrastructure, you can enhance productivity and decrease application downtime.
When monitoring the IT infrastructure, you must collect data from the on-premises and cloud services to analyze the system’s performance and health. There are two methods for infrastructure monitoring:
- Agent-based monitoring
It is lightweight software installed by engineers on a system or device that monitors data. The process of installing agents on hosts is known as instrumentation. Modern infrastructure monitoring systems use sensors to keep track of components after configuration.
Once the components are instrumented, they reflect the infrastructure status, such as CPU or memory utilization.
If you want proactive monitoring of IT assets, agent-based monitoring will help identify issues. For instance, a CPU system can heat up due to overload, and agent-based monitoring will alert the team to address the issue before it impacts the user experience.
- Agentless monitoring
In this method, you do not need a separate software agent installed on the host. Built-in protocols, such as Windows Management Instrumentation, collect and deliver the data. Agentless monitoring is also useful for legacy systems and specialized hardware such as routers, switches, or load balancers.
No additional resource is required, so the system’s performance remains intact. However, the data collected may be limited in comparison to agent-based monitoring.
2. Automate IT workflows
Automating redundant and time-consuming IT processes is important to free up resources for strategic tasks. Here’s how ITAM software can streamline IT workflows:
- Provisioning and configuration tools: Use the software to set up infrastructure and manage access to IT assets. Also, use provisioned assets for configuration, allocate assets to users, and analyze dependencies.
- Patch management: Automate downloading, testing, and deploying security patches to systems.
- Monitor performance and get alerts: Track assets in real-time, use metrics to gauge performance, and set alerts for problems that arise.
3. Simplify via Virtualization
Different physical servers can be used for website traffic, applications, or support business emails. Upon analysis, IT teams realize these dedicated servers are not utilized to full capacity. This is where they use virtualization to divide one physical server into three virtual servers. As a result, they can sell servers that are not in use, saving costs and improving efficiencies.
4. Disaster recovery
Unexpected IT-related problems, cyber threats, and natural disasters can impede business continuity. It is crucial to plan stringent disaster recovery processes and backup protocols to minimize downtime. Start identifying risk-prone areas susceptible to potential threats and vulnerabilities. Assess their likelihood and plan to mitigate risks based on impact.
Run a business impact analysis to recognize business-critical functions and decide on an acceptable downtime for these functions. IT teams can easily define recovery times for data backup and resolution. Additionally, keep multiple backup locations on-site, offsite, or cloud-based to create duplicates of confidential data for faster recovery.
Manage IT infrastructure with reliable IT asset management software
The best way to transform your business operations is to manage your IT infrastructure better.
Nowadays, every organization is faced with the complexities of IT infrastructure. They struggle to keep up with monitoring inventories and need a reliable solution.
Reliable IT asset management software tracks every component of the infrastructure with just a few clicks to automate processes, monitor performance, and ensure the IT environment runs smoothly.
It’s about time you utilize the full potential of your software, assets, IT services, network discovery, and more to drive efficiency across the organization.
