Modern organizations across industries are constantly under pressure to innovate and scale. Just over a decade ago, an organization could buy its time, be conservative in investing in new technologies, and still maintain a competitive edge. Fast-forward to today and the business and technology landscape is much more dynamic with changes in business practices and new technology popping up constantly.
Organizations are increasingly at risk of getting left behind if they don’t scale fast. The need to implement new technologies quickly presents new, critical business challenges. The evolution of the business landscape has brought more prominence to IT infrastructure management.
What is IT infrastructure management?
IT infrastructure management primarily involves the administration and management of critical IT components to effectively utilize information, data, and technology. An IT infrastructure is the blueprint that shapes your enterprise IT environment. It consists of all components that facilitate the management and usability of data.
An IT infrastructure is comprised of various components:
Hardware and software: These are the computers, servers, routers, switches, and other network devices and software used by employees on their computers to communicate, access, and store information and company-wide applications that help solve business problems.
Networking: Networking is the coming-together of hardware and software. A network, with the addition of internet connectivity, brings about intra- and inter-network communication. Security and firewalls form critical sub-components of a network infrastructure.
Data center and storage: Managing data storage infrastructure is critical to any organization. Traditionally, data was stored on servers and computers in different geographic locations to be accessed using LAN or WAN. IT infrastructures now also use cloud storage, where data can be stored on third-party servers on the cloud.
Wired and wireless access: Many organizations rely on the internet, telecommunication, cables, mobile technologies like 5G, and other capabilities for communication.
Virtual and remote assets: Organizations own digital assets that makeup a virtual infrastructure. A virtual infrastructure provides similar capabilities to that of a physical infrastructure, but virtual resources are more agile in how they can be allocated to different ends of the network according to the needs of the organization.
What is the role of IT infrastructure management?
IT infrastructure management lies at the intersection of network infrastructure and an organization’s business goals. The purpose of IT infrastructure management is to maintain structure and control over diverse technical operations that involve different layers of the network while minimizing downtime and increasing business capabilities.
Because IT infrastructure management is so complex, it’s often broken down into three subcategories, namely network management, systems management, and storage management.
An IT Infrastructure management team in an organization is primarily entrusted with the following responsibilities:
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Manage day-to-day IT operations to cut infrastructure costs and improve performance to ensure high customer satisfaction. Monitor market trends, study the impact of different technologies, and proactively develop long-term plans to stay ahead of the curve while also keeping costs in check.
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Ensure optimum system performance is maintained and SLAs are met.
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Effectively manage IT assets to ensure assets are fully utilized and no excess assets are purchased when existing ones can still be used.
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Execute continuous IT improvement initiatives and ensure the infrastructure scales with the business’s needs with the help of capacity monitoring and planning.
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Oversee infrastructure risk management. Effectively monitor, resolve, and manage all infrastructure-related risks.
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Build strategic relationships and ensure close cooperation with key service providers.
What are the benefits of IT infrastructure management?
Builds solid foundations for consistent and effective decision-making: With continuous monitoring and management of the network, IT admins get the full picture of how the network is performing. With all the information available, the IT operations team can think strategically, including when to plan the next upgrade, risks to be mitigated on priority, and so on.
Keep pace with ever-changing technology: Organizations that lag in technology adoption risk getting left behind, slowing down growth considerably. IT infrastructure management helps an organization relentlessly evolve, make crucial upgrades, and meet compliance requirements.
An outage free network infrastructure impacts user experience positively: With IT operations teams keeping constant tabs on the network, downtime is cut down significantly. It also lets you plan scheduled downtime for infrastructure upgrades or maintenance. Overall, IT infrastructure management lets you exercise greater control over the availability of the whole network and its services.
Security is a necessity and IT infrastructure management facilitates a holistic approach to protecting your infrastructure and data: The rapid growth of network systems has provided opportunities for newfound vulnerabilities to be exploited. Security breaches can paralyze the network and bring down the business. Organizations spend years recovering from a data leak or a security breach because of the massive financial and reputational damages incurred. With an efficient IT infrastructure management process, you can mitigate disasters by proactively detecting violations and resolving them. Constant security measures are also implemented to reduce any weakness in the IT infrastructure.
Minimize costs: IT infrastructure management ensures fewer unforeseen incidents and, as a result, considerably cuts down unexpected costs. Being proactive instead of reactive can save millions for an organization, optimizing the infrastructure for any potential network incident ahead of time.
With OpManager Plus you can manage your entire IT infrastructure with a single tool and put an end to all ITIM woes
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Advanced IT infrastructure health, availability, performance feature pool with support for over 8,000 devices and more than 200 performance metrics
- Detailed traffic and bandwidth analysis ensures your business-critical applications never run into bandwidth issues. Advanced security analysis management for both wired and wireless devices,which in turn allows you to create a network traffic policy specific to your organization’s needs.
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Network configuration management is simplified with features including rule-based access, configuration backups, user-based activity tracking, and restoring devices to their previous working conditions in case of a network outage.
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Rule-based, agent-less log analysis that provides insights into bandwidth and traffic behavior. In-depth analysis of security logs provides a better understanding of security threats and breach attempts, allowing you to plan an effective firewall strategy.
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View your IP infrastructure from a central console with IP address and switch port monitoring.
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Reduce manual intervention and increase fault management efficiency using workflows.
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Extend the capabilities of your IT infrastructure management tool using using seamless third-party integrations.
Learn more about OpManager Plus.
