The needs of a business can change rapidly, especially as it expands. Creating an IT infrastructure capable of supporting your needs as you scale-up is essential. A scalable IT infrastructure increases its output when you add additional resources like storage, processing power, software, and hardware.
An unsuitable IT infrastructure can significantly slow your progress and depress your earnings. Even worse, If your business does not have the infrastructure in place to sustain growth, then its growth potential can be severely limited. \
These four tips will help you to develop the IT Infrastructure that will allow you to function effectively even when scaling up.
1. Develop a Long Term Strategy
Your IT infrastructure planning should go hand in hand with your overall business planning. To ensure that your infrastructure can be scaled, think about more than technology. Consider your team structure, HR practices, and automation, and make sure you have a growth mindset.
Careful resource planning ensures that your IT needs always meet your business needs with no costly lagging, but make sure when you’re solving problems, you’re thinking about the long haul instead of just trying to find a quick fix.
2. Work Towards Data and Software Consolidation
Data has the potential to benefit your business as it grows, but if left unorganized, it can just as easily hurt your growth potential. Uncontrolled data stored on disparate systems can also be a huge security risk. Consolidating this data can be a huge effort but is well worth the time and investment.
By consolidating, you can remove errors, duplicates, and redundancies before storing your data in a managed location like a data center. With so much data being created on a daily basis, consolidation offers greater control to organizations struggling to manage their data and use it to make wise business decisions.
Similarly, the consolidation of software platforms is also essential to create an efficient, scalable system. Many companies are looking towards cloud computing to consolidate their applications and data.
3. Invest in Cloud Solutions
Migrating your IT infrastructure to the cloud is an effective way to streamline your business processes and enable better collaboration between team members. Building a physical IT infrastructure can be very expensive. Add to that the cost of IT specialists to manage it on a day-to-day basis, and costs can soar. Meanwhile, an article in Forbes showed that companies who switched to a cloud-based infrastructure saved between 30-50% on IT infrastructure costs.
Cloud computing can also improve your business flexibility as it enables employees to work from any location with access to your systems in real time and instant communication. While traditional systems require buying additional hardware and licenses, cloud systems can be scaled quickly, often by simply upgrading features and storage.
4. Outsource Your IT To Managed IT Services
The benefits of outsourcing your IT to a Managed Service Provider (MSP) has a huge number of benefits for companies of all sizes. MSPs work with clients from all sectors to plan, scale and manage IT infrastructures, saving them both time and money. There are many benefits to using a managed service provider.
- Have a fully-trained, expert team on hand for the price of a single-full time employee.
- Streamline your data and processes. Experienced MSPs can make your systems much more efficient.
- Get advice from an MSP team made up of experts. They’ll use knowledge from a variety of sectors to implement the best IT solutions for you.
- Channel your resources into your business instead of worrying about IT solutions.
- Make your company more secure even as cyberattacks continue to increase.
- Gain access to the same equipment, software, and expertise as much larger companies by outsourcing your IT to a managed service provider, and remain competitive.
Planning and maintaining your IT infrastructure to scale can help your business succeed in the long term. These four tips will help you to improve your competitive edge while saving you time, resources, and money.
