Five Ways to Reduce IT Complexity

Annie Shah

Ingram Micro UK&I Marketing Campaign Manager, HPE

IT infrastructures can become increasingly complex as they evolve and grow. The answer for many businesses lies in the simplicity that hybrid IT provides

Escalating complexities are a concern around many IT infrastructures, but the digital transformation journey has seen hybrid IT arrive as a solution to this issue.

What is hybrid IT? This is where an organisation consumes both cloud and on-premises IT. It can make firms more flexible and agile, giving them the scalability to grow and flourish, limiting the large costs associated with cloud, but enabling traditional infrastructure to be just as flexible as cloud solutions.

When there is complexity in an IT environment this can impact productivity. It is thus essential to reduce these complexities.

By reducing the complexity with hybrid IT, the IT teams of firms can spend more time innovating and less time ‘keeping the lights on’ or ‘fighting fires’ around their infrastructure.

To achieve this, businesses can utilise the simplicity of hybrid IT and streamline operations to dramatically increase the speed of an infrastructure’s functioning.

1. Manage it

A vital element around hybrid IT is to ensure efficiency and ease of management.

The task in hand for IT vendors is to be able to offer a single, unified view of the health of thousands of server profiles, storage devices and enclosures and more across multiple data centres with the right management tool.

Businesses would be well advised to invest in a hybrid IT management tool which enables them to more simply manage the infrastructure. The management tool should make overseeing the physical and cloud aspects of the infrastructure equally seamless.

2. Get services support

One of the best methods of reducing the complexity of an IT infrastructure through hybrid IT is ensuring that a business has the support of expert advice.

As a firm’s hybrid IT evolves and develops, firms need external expertise to reduce any emerging complexities.

There are various options on this front, including the consultancy units of the major vendors, to managed services providers and other channel firms providing support.

3. Be ready to scale up

Growth is the lifeblood of businesses and firms want technology which assist on this upward trend. Technology should enable the growth process, not hinder it.

When it comes to hybrid IT, if firms have failed to prepare for their growth, this can cause growing pains as additional capability is bolted on.

To pre-empt this issue, firms need to plan in advance to ensure their hybrid IT has the scalability it needs. This is particularly the case when firms are building up their remote and branch offices.

4. Flexibility is key

Hybrid IT can become increasingly complex when firms have to make specific decisions about how to manage their infrastructure, but do not have the flexibility to action those choices.

For example, many firms want the flexibility of a cloud infrastructure but do want to move all applications in the cloud. This might be for security or compliance reasons. Either way, not having the flexibility to choose can complicate matters for firms.

This means investing in a hybrid IT infrastructure which enables a business to make the right decisions for its specific needs.

5. Keep it reliable

When technical problems occur, dealing with those issues further complicates the management of an IT infrastructure.

Systems that do have the required reliability, slow down IT teams and increase costs. This is an additional complication which also drains productivity.

Businesses must ensure they have a robust hybrid IT infrastructure which can be relied on to deliver ongoing functionality.

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