Technology is an essential part of most business operations nowadays, regardless of the size of the business… and how that size may change over time. As such, it is essential that the infrastructure that supports this IT can adapt to these swells and declines.
Let’s discuss why it is so important that your IT infrastructure fits your business and a few best practices for tailoring it.
To begin, we’ll explore why having a scalable infrastructure is so crucial, especially to the small and medium-sized businesses of Texas & Florida.
What Benefits Do Businesses Get from a Flexible, Scalable IT Infrastructure?
There are many reasons that today’s businesses not only benefit from scalability but also actively need some degree of it to remain competitive in their market. First and foremost, it is inherently integral to a business’ growth.
The long and the short of it is that one of the few ways to increase a business’ operations (thereby bringing in more revenue) is to expand its capabilities without sacrificing the standard previously set. Scaling up technology allows this to happen, as it adds utility without negatively impacting the user experience regarding responsiveness or performance. As such, your team can accomplish more.
On a related note, your team will be able to shift priorities quickly, confident their IT will keep pace with them and allow them to pursue new opportunities while also using their resources most effectively. This flexibility can even extend into remote work capabilities and should be present in your business continuity preparations.
In short, there are plenty of reasons you want your infrastructure to have some level of flexibility… and this is far from a comprehensive list. So, let’s discuss some best practices for managing your IT infrastructure and ensuring it is scalable.
Best Practices for IT Infrastructure Scalability
Understand What You Need
To chart a path that will facilitate your business’ scalability, you must first understand your goals and what your company will need to support them. What will you require to meet the responsibilities that growth would bring? This line of questioning helps inform your strategy moving forward, as you can select tools and resources that will provide precisely what you need.
As you do so, you should ensure you’re building in cybersecurity, redundancy, backup, and other preventative measures to help protect you over time as you confirm that you align with applicable compliance standards.
Keep an Eye on Performance
It’s also important to closely monitor how your business’ IT infrastructure operates daily to improve it efficiently, either by identifying present issues or by spotting potential upgrades. Ideally, by being proactive, these improvements can be made before any real problems arise and impact your operations.
Don’t be afraid to make changes to your infrastructure and processes as you pursue these performance improvements. Utilize monitoring tools to capture data points and evaluate the effectiveness of your changes.
Turn to Professionals for Assistance
As many of these processes and procedures can be somewhat time-consuming, it can be challenging for many businesses to devote sufficient energy to them… never mind that many companies don’t have the in-house experience required to keep up with their other needs even before scaling is factored in. For these businesses, outsourcing these responsibilities to an external provider is a great option—especially if that provider happens to be an MSP (or managed service provider) like Flexnet Networks LLC.
An MSP Makes Scaling—and Doing Anything Involving IT—Easier
An MSP will step in and serve as an IT department, either supplementing an in-house staff or as a fully outsourced entity. In doing so, the MSP takes responsibility for the future of a business’ technology in any way needed.
If a business needs consulting, the MSP will be a consultant.
If a business needs additional support, the MSP provides that support.
If a business needs an advocate to work with vendors, the MSP will be an advocate.
You get the idea. Naturally, monitoring and managing an IT infrastructure also falls under an MSP’s purview, including helping the client scale it appropriately. We can be your MSP, providing all this and more. If you’d like to learn more about us and our services, please call us at (432) 520-3539.
