by Alan Hayward, Sales and Marketing Manager, SEH Technology
In today’s digital world, business success is centred around technology. The best way for corporations to achieve this is by taking important steps to simplify and optimise their IT environments in order to gain immediate benefits. By fully optimising their IT infrastructures, organisations can drive further improvements for its business and employees alike, as it enables them to seize new opportunities, reduce costs across the company as well as improving efficiency and productivity in the longer term.
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that a number of companies across the globe had legacy systems that were inflexible and restrictive when it came to adapting to the crisis. Applications that were running on outdated infrastructures also proved to be prone to outages, capacity issues and higher maintenance costs, ultimately impacting the business’ operations. This highlighted the importance of creating a lower-cost and simplified IT infrastructure that is scalable and flexible to the changing demands of employees.
Unleashing the benefits of IT optimisation
There are a number of advantages that businesses can gain from fully optimising their IT processes, ultimately driving value and ROI in the future. These include, working more efficiently, saving time and costs, maximising security and creating opportunities for growth.
Working more efficiently
IT optimisation leads to businesses working more efficiently, as it eliminates unnecessary steps and automates processes that can save time, reduce errors and avoid duplicated effort. Organisations can also uncover any roadblocks in their overall IT infrastructure and ensure they align with the long term goals of the business. By identifying these performance issues, IT leaders can address these challenges that may be causing a reduction in efficiency or higher costs for the business.
Allocating technology resources
Linking to business efficiency, when an IT system is overwhelmed with tasks, it can become difficult for the infrastructure to manage the workload and ensure projects are completed to the best of its ability. With IT optimisation, technology resources can be allocated as workloads are managed to ensure under or over utilisation doesn’t take place. The purpose of this process is to ensure technology can be maximised to create resource or cost efficiencies and improve overall performance.
Maximising data security
Part of the IT optimisation process involves establishing how a business can improve its cybersecurity and understanding what tools and skills are needed to maximise protection. It’s vital for companies to ensure that its team is fully trained in combating cybersecurity, with the relevant skills and tools to sufficiently protect the network and IT infrastructure. Investing in comprehensive and regular training for the key staff that use tools and systems is critical, especially as the landscape changes at a rapid pace with new threats constantly rising.
Opportunities for growth
The technology industry is evolving at a rapid pace, and ongoing IT optimisation means that businesses can take advantage of the latest technologies and tools that will help them stay up to date with the latest advancements to maintain a competitive edge. With fully optimised infrastructures, businesses have a structure for continuous improvement, new ideas and opportunities for innovation. This also makes it easier for different departments across the business to collaborate and share information and best practices with each other.
Future of IT optimisation
When businesses are seeking ways to lower costs and achieve greater agility, security and flexibility, IT optimisation is vital in identifying areas for improvement and opportunities for growth. There are a few quick wins that organisations can undertake to optimise IT, including rationalising redundant and underused applications, modernising legacy applications, incorporating greater insights for IT operations and optimising workload placement. Overall, optimisation plays a vital role in a business’ IT infrastructures as it helps reduce costs that can lead to higher profits and success in the battle against competitors in the market.
