An IT Support Blog from London

If your organisation has migrated to the cloud, then good for you. Depending on the extent of your utilisation of cloud solutions, you would have already saved your business valuable time, manpower, and money. As enterprises may discover at some point, however, there are also some challenges to embracing cloud computing. One of these is to understand exactly where your cloud spend is going. To avoid inefficiency and wastefulness, it’s important to use cloud resources in the right way by applying cloud cost optimisation.

As we head further into the digital era, the need for cyber security has never been more apparent. Organisations are moving many of their business applications and data into the cloud, making the cloud a prime target for cyber criminals and threat actors. If you’re not yet paying extra attention to your cloud security, then it’s high time you did.

Cloud Security Defined

Cloud security is a discipline of cybersecurity that focuses primarily on protecting the cloud. Also referred to as cloud computing security, it is the collection of security policies, guidelines, procedures and technologies designed to work together to secure cloud-based applications and systems.

Enterprises of all sizes are now paying more attention to cloud security with the increased reliance on a cloud environment. Not only are business data, customer information, and other valuable data assets being entrusted to cloud storage, but the ‘attack surface’ of cyber threats has also significantly expanded with employees using a variety of smart devices as they work from anywhere.

The adoption of remote work has never been as rushed as in the last couple of years, fueled by the global crisis that was COVID-19 and the movement limitations it brought about. Amidst all the adjustments that businesses have had to make to cope with the situation, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and related cloud solutions paved the way in helping organisations successfully shift to a remote workforce.

Today more than ever, enterprises need to invest in a computing infrastructure that can ably secure data and other high-risk assets, keep applications and workloads running, and in general, ensure maximum operational efficiency. Part of the upkeep needed for IT infrastructure and data center hardware is equipment maintenance.

For servers, routers, and other storage and networking equipment that are 3 years old at most, technical support can be easily had from the devices’ original equipment manufacturers (OEM) such as HPE, IBM, Dell EMC, NetApp, Cisco, and other mainstream suppliers. However, for organisations needing to maintain older equipment and/or a disparate collection of devices, third-party maintenance (TPM) services would prove to be a more feasible alternative.

As organisations evolve, so do their IT infrastructure needs. Whether it’s due to organisational expansion (merger/acquisition), launching of a new application, physical relocation of a company, the need for faster connectivity, or any other reason, it may come to a point when the enterprise’s current data solutions will no longer suffice. This is when a data center migration would have to be seriously considered.

Now more than ever, business organisations are using technology for a variety of reasons: maintaining operational efficiency, keeping cybersecurity threats at bay, harnessing the value of data, adapting to the evolving workforce, and many more. This means that companies have to ensure that their IT systems and equipment are working as they should at all times.

As technology requirements grow however, the task of keeping everything together—from IT infrastructure to applications to end user devices, is challenging for small and medium-sized enterprises. Most businesses barely have the budget for a dedicated tech personnel, let alone an entire IT team. The good thing is that even if you don’t have a dedicated IT department, you can benefit from the technical expertise and services of one with the help of a managed service provider.

As the world moves further along the digital age, enterprises need to include in their long-term planning the impact of acquiring tons and tons of electronics and how they are going to dispose of these later on. This is essential for every organisation because consumers today have become more mindful of the ethical practices of businesses, particularly those that relate to society and the environment. If you’re a company that endeavors to make corporate social responsibility (CSR) part of your business practices, then you need a solid plan for retiring IT equipment.

In 2019 alone, a whopping 53.6 million tons of e-waste were generated worldwide and only 17% of that got recycled. That was 3 years ago and the numbers just keep rising every year. If we are to combat the environmental effects that technology waste brings about, every enterprise should have a well-thought-out ITAD plan. But first, what is ITAD?

With the speed with which technology evolves these days, IT hardware is phased out much faster than organisations would prefer. Servers, routers, and console managers—all part of a data center’s infrastructure, need to be working efficiently at all times to ensure continued business operations.

No equipment is expected to last forever, though. Regardless of how good the quality of your equipment is, how diligently you’ve maintained it with IT support London services (for UK-based enterprises), or how well it fits with the rest of your network, there will come a time when your device will reach this stage of its IT lifecycle—the End-of-Service Life (EOSL).

To the uninitiated, the term dark data may evoke images of mysterious stores of data tucked away in an obscure location—hopefully, distant enough from your company’s hard drives so that they are no threat to online security. The reality however, is that there’s nothing ominous at all about dark data, it’s closer to you than you think, and more importantly, it can even bring value to your business when used right.

In this article, we define what dark data is and where it comes from, discuss ways to harness the value that it holds, and understand the challenges that may come with its management.

IT infrastructure, technology hardware, and data centers are playing a huge role in the current business landscape, and now form part of the key capital investments that companies allocate substantial budgets for. As such, businesses are looking to maximise on their techn investments and wish to extend the life of their hardware pieces for as long as possible.

When it comes to servicing and maintaining data center products and IT equipment, businesses have 3 choices: stick to maintenance contracts of the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), partner with Third Party Maintenance (TPM) providers, or adopt a combination of both. In this post, we learn more about the difference between OEM and TPM, and evaluate which option could offer better IT support London services for data center equipment.