“
FINAL WORD
NEW IT TECHNOLOGIES
ARE DEVELOPED FOR A REASON, SO
IT IS IMPORTANT FOR BUSINESSES
TO STAY IN-THE-KNOW WHEN IT
COMES TO THE LATEST SOLUTIONS
AND UNDERSTAND THE BENEFITS.
New IT technologies are developed for a
reason, so it is important for businesses to
stay in-the-know when it comes to the latest
solutions and understand the benefits they
can offer their current infrastructure.
Continuing to deploy older solutions may
be inefficient and lead to higher costs,
which will put businesses on the back foot
compared to those businesses that have
implemented modern solutions which are
often faster and more efficient.
Organisations should begin to think of IT
as less of a cost centre and more of an
investment centre that drives the business
forward with improved technology. Refusing
to let go of older technologies will cost
businesses, since they will be held back from
investing in technologies that give them a
competitive edge.
2. Only investing in big brands
It is understandable that businesses want to
place their trust in well-known brands with
good reputations that deliver solid solutions.
However, IT is an innovation industry fuelled
by start-ups and entrepreneurs.
Those larger brands that everyone has heard
of are often start-ups that traded the energy
they put into creativity for a focus on profit.
In doing so, they can gain recognition for
their brand name in order to raise prices and
lock-in customers to lengthy contracts, as
well as high maintenance and support fees.
Larger brands also have the tendency to
acquire smaller companies in order to
leverage their innovations. By taking on
the technologies these smaller businesses
have created, larger organisations can
stamp their own branding on the product,
along with a higher price tag. It is time for
businesses to pay closer attention to start-
ups in order to make use of the newer, more
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creative technologies they offer, often at
a lower price. Businesses will therefore be
paying for the merits of the solution and
not for the brand name.
3. Separating technology into
individual buckets
In the past, it made sense for the technology
industry to divide IT infrastructure into
individual components such as storage,
servers, virtualisation, backup and disaster
recovery. The problem with this is that
it prevents IT professionals from taking
a step back and seeing how all of these
components can interact with each other
in the bigger picture, while achieving their
maximum potential.
Unless the entire IT department can think
about the whole IT vision, these individual
technology ‘buckets’ cannot operate
efficiently together.
It is therefore important that businesses look
for opportunities to simplify and combine
these technologies in order to avoid over-
specialisation by IT professionals. Since
complexity and isolated components can
make efficiency and cost-effectiveness
difficult, IT departments should be looking
into solutions that combine varying
technologies to make them more efficient
and profitable.
4. Investing in too many vendors
Along similar lines with trying to keep
track of too many technology ‘buckets’,
investing in too many different vendors can
become very complicated and costly for IT
departments. Since each vendor will have
different management interfaces, they will
also have different documentation, different
support contacts and different training
and certification. There are also different
versions, maintenance and patch schedules.
This creates an entirely incompatible,
unstable overall solution which is almost
impossible to keep track of.
Of course, it is important for businesses
to remain on the lookout for new vendor
technologies that will improve business
operations, but each of these components
does not have to be provided by a separate
vendor. There are some technologies that
can be combined together – such as servers,
storage and virtualisation – into a single
vendor solution. Doing so simplifies training,
management and support, as well as
lowering costs.
5. Over-preparing
Historically, vendors have tried to convince
businesses to buy more than they had to in
order to ‘plan for the future’. The only issue
with this is that in IT, it is almost impossible
to ascertain what a business’ technology
needs will look like three or four years into
the future. Solutions and their pricing
change frequently, so in two or three years,
businesses will likely be able to purchase
newer and improved technologies at a
lower price than one might pay now. Over-
provisioning now by attempting to guess
what a business’ needs will be in the future is
not a worthy investment.
One answer to this conundrum is for
businesses to seek and invest in solutions
that are easily scaled up or down. With this
capability, IT departments can buy exactly
what they need, when they need it. In the
future, they will be able to scale with faster
and bigger capacity when necessary. With
this flexibility, businesses can make use
of the latest technologies in the future,
when they become available – their IT
infrastructure will be ‘future-proofed’.
As IT is constantly challenging its users
to do more with less, businesses should
be wary of these unproductive, bad IT
industry habits so as not to turn their IT
departments into horror shows. By taking
note of new technologies from smaller
companies that can be easily managed as
one solution, companies can prepare for
the future without breaking their budgets.
Moving past these old IT habits will allow IT
departments to do more with less, making
IT simpler and more efficient, both now
and into the future. n
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