IT Trends & Technology

As enterprises pursue digital transformations that impact infrastructure and operations, they face evolving IT needs requiring new skills and expertise for either finite project implementations or ongoing infrastructure needs. Simultaneously, some legacy systems, such as mainframes, may require updates and maintenance to remain viable, while other infrastructure needs may call for new platform implementations.

Despite the growing momentum towards digital transformation, businesses across all sectors are limited to incremental change because of budget constraints. The result is legacy technologies and IT infrastructure that must be maintained for a wide variety of reasons. The challenge with this incremental approach is fulfilling the IT staffing needs for maintaining these legacy systems.

Are you struggling to keep up with everything your IT department is being asked to do? In today’s business climate, both threats and opportunities offer significant challenges to even the most seasoned staff. Escalating salaries and frequent job movement can make it difficult to find and retain the right people without breaking the bank.

More than half of IT professionals surveyed (53%) indicated that optimizing current cloud use is the top initiative in 2017. That number rises to 64 percent among mature cloud users. That’s largely because of the amount of wasted cloud spend, estimated at 30 percent by users and likely to run as much as 45 percent.

Because of the limitations of operating in either a dedicated or a public cloud environment, organizations are moving to a hybrid cloud solution to improve security, reduce costs, and find the best-fit solution for business challenges. But as the survey indicates, knowing where to direct resources for the greatest benefit isn’t easy—even for the most seasoned IT pro. That’s why many businesses are turning to cloud managed services.

While there can be numerous benefits derived from data center consolidation, realizing them requires a defined set of outcomes and a clear strategy. Achieving those benefits can be hampered by challenges such as those associated with user base application access, the associated security concerns and the disruption to the enterprise that the consolidation process can bring overall. There are also a number of short-term and long-term costs (both hidden and obvious) that require a detailed plan of execution and long-term strategy.

A recent IDC white paper survey of medium to large enterprises and their data center servers found that 55 percent of capacity is unused, resulting in Capex waste because of inefficient utilization. Equally important is the Opex waste from the time and personnel resources needed to provision workloads in a scenario in which increased server consolidation process time results in higher costs.

While 451 Research predicts that application containers will grow faster than any other solution type (40 percent annually in 2017 and 2018, many organizations are still determining how and if containers or virtual machines (VMs) are the best fit for their infrastructure plans. The ongoing debate as to the use of VMs or container technology is happening regardless of the growing adoption of containerization, primarily because every business’s needs are different. When it comes to choosing the right option for your business, it’s important to understand the benefits of each by viewing them through the lens of business priorities.

According to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, vendor revenue in the worldwide server market declined 4.6 percent year over year to $11.8 billion in the first quarter of 2017. That decline is clearly driven by data center consolidation and server consolidation more specifically. Server consolidation is a way to make a more efficient IT environment by combining servers or replacing legacy servers with virtual systems, like cloud or SaaS products. Server consolidation is exactly what it sounds like: It’s essentially consolidating hardware for more effective usage.

Given the rapid pace of change across the technology landscape, few businesses are able to sustain an effective in-house IT effort over the long haul.

A number of factors work against the enterprise that tries to tackle IT on a purely in-house basis. Qualified experts are in high demand and short supply, and they come with hefty salary expectations. When tech trends shift and new needs emerge, in-house experts may not have the expertise needed to adapt.

According to CompTIA’s IT Industry Outlook 2017 report, there are five major factors contributing to a more challenging landscape for IT professionals in 2017. These factors are:

• Finding workers with expertise in emerging tech fields
• Competition for IT talent
• Finding workers with the right soft skills
• Rising salary expectations
• Insufficient pool of talent in region/locale

The recent WannaCry virus cyberattack has left many businesses re-evaluating their security and privacy policies and procedures to avoid falling victim as the attack continues to spread and replicate.

First National Technology Solutions (FNTS), a highly compliant, highly secure, nationally recognized leader in managed IT services, has expertise in information security and risk mitigation.

Today many enterprises face the challenge of bridging business and technology to close the digital gap. As these enterprises utilize more digital channels to reach customers the technology to support these initiatives is often slow to keep up.

So how do enterprises close the gap and set their business up for success in the digital era? Here are a few tips:

• Strategy.  With a clear strategy and desired goal, you can build a solid foundation to begin to bring your legacy systems and new technology together. (Bi-modal model)
• Culture. The adoption of new technology and a new way of doing things often results in a culture change.  To be successful, both your business model and your employees have to have the desire and ambition to accept a new business approach.
• Revision. As digital outpaces the tradition business model, you will have the agility and scalability to adjust your business as needed, reacting to customer demand and industry trends.  

First National Technology Solution’s philosophy with customers focuses on really developing a long term relationship. In partnering with FNTS, customers are guaranteed a very high level of service, and one which continues to receive value throughout the life of their relationship.

The best way to add value is by giving customers access to the “best of breed” from a technology perspective. Doing so means providing the leading edge technology for customers to take advantage of in their operation. Going hand in hand with leading technology, is offering access to highly trained and skilled senior engineers, as well as delivering services in a very timely fashion.

When talking about capital expenditures, it helps to view them as investments. With that in mind, all investments should be considered carefully, and have a return. It’s typically something that you own, depreciates over a useful life, and is recorded as an asset on your balance sheet.

The windows operating system can be extremely helpful when operating correctly. Like any system however, if not properly managed, it can bring its fair share of difficulties.