Entrepreneur, technology evangelist, business strategist. Chief executive officer and co-founder Visartech Inc.Agency for the development of software products.
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Imagine that you are driving on an 8-lane highway, but it is located in the countryside and only a few people use it. This road is pretty flat and nice, but does it make sense? That’s right; there is no need for such a big road in a rural area—it would rather be somewhere in a big busy city.
Business IT infrastructure is the same road that you have to establish. With proper organization and optimization, you ensure that your cars—parts of your IT ecosystem (servers, business application software solutions, and data centers) are always running efficiently. Additionally, the allocation of business budgets to meet the actual needs at hand.
The more efficient, stable and secure the IT infrastructure is, the better it operates. Namely, your company’s software works flawlessly; therefore, the server response time is quite fast, and all user requests are processed immediately; your company’s data is highly protected—without loss or system downtime.
So let’s discuss the best practices driven by the DevOps approach that could help companies optimize their IT infrastructure and thus their processes.
1. Embracing DevOps agility
Living in a fast-changing world, the ability to quickly update and optimize your IT ecosystem gives your business a competitive advantage. To establish that strength of agility and adaptability, consider applying DevOps-proven practices.
DevOps promotes the idea of continuous improvement and rapid delivery of software. This helps companies to always keep their IT infrastructure up-to-date, taking into account all the growing trends, required updates and new features.
In addition, DevOps practices include the adoption of cloud technology, which in turn reduces manual work through automation. Based on data from the DevOps Report, 33% of respondents say DevOps has helped them automate their most repetitive tasks.
2. Go to cloud-based infrastructure
Cloud is emerging as a proven standard for business data storage. Therefore, 94% of companies worldwide regularly use cloud services. And it’s not surprising since the cloud can significantly reduce the budgets of companies while providing enormous flexibility (no physical servers required.)
For example, you have 500 employees using your company’s software every day, but you’re starting to expand your staff, which means more users. The cloud will dynamically scale the space to the exact size you need.
Placing business IT infrastructure in the cloud also helps prevent data loss. Unlike a local server, the cloud provides data backup in the event of a system failure or outage.
3. Creating a secure IT ecosystem
IT infrastructure serves as the backbone of your business. This means that its security is definitely responsible for the excellent performance of your company’s business. And that’s why in the next three years, 76% of C-level executives intend to invest most of their efforts in infrastructure security.
When securing your infrastructure, develop and implement a cybersecurity policy tailored to the specifics of your industry and business. Be sure to conduct DevOps penetration testing to help you see the whole picture of your company’s cyber resilience.
4. Monitoring the overall performance of the infrastructure
We return to DevOps principles. One of them is to respond as quickly as possible when critical incidents occur. This includes an incident management team that will regularly monitor your IT infrastructure 24/7.
The monitoring process is automated and takes place continuously. The incident management team sets up a bunch of monitoring tools and alerting systems. Then the team notices any errors that appear and fixes them immediately.
In addition to preventing various problems, infrastructure monitoring directly affects sales. Take Amazon, which earns an average of $14,900 every second. In the event of downtime, even 20 seconds would cost the company a fortune.
We pave the way for you to optimize your IT infrastructure
By its very nature, any system needs updates and improvements over time to keep things running smoothly. Infrastructure is no exception. And when you get down to optimizing your IT infrastructure, consider taking the following important steps.
• Conduct a comprehensive technical audit of the entire infrastructure and define the main vulnerabilities and deficiencies of the system.
• Create an IT infrastructure optimization plan that will include a workflow and a list of improvements that need to be made.
• Initiate the implementation of the planned infrastructure improvement and maintain ongoing support.
As a result of changes in your IT infrastructure, your business and its IT ecosystem, in general, become more flexible, highly secure and cost-effective.
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