An IT Support Blog from London

The rise of virtual computing environments and the constant challenge to lower operating costs have spurred the demand for thin clients. From its current 2022 valuation of USD 1.19 billion, the global thin client market is expected to reach USD 1.32 billion by 2030, or an annual growth rate of 2.8%.

What has further aided the increased usage of thin clients is the advancement of technologies such as faster broadband networks, more powerful servers, cheaper storage, and a host of cloud solutions to cater to the enterprise’s every need. In this blog post, we discuss what a thin client is, what its advantages are, and the use cases that would make it better over the PC.

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).

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.

Business as usual. A term that denotes the humdrum of everyday life, and in the case of businesses, of a usual workload. Despite the connotation of an unexciting, rather mundane routine, if corporate leaders and office managers would really think about it; processes, systems, and the workplace doing business as usual is an ideal state because this means that operations are running smoothly.

More often than not however, business operations require a lot of time and resources, and it’s difficult to ensure that things are working seamlessly at all times. In the UK for instance, inhouse IT staff and IT support London teams are relied on to carry out everyday technology-related tasks that allow operations to continue without disruptions.

Now post-pandemic, as the world moves on adjusting to what is now the new normal—a state where enterprises are highly-reliant on technology, the demands on the IT organisation have become even heavier.

With COVID currently making a huge impact on how we work, it should be safe to say the future of work is bound to deviate from what we thought was the original course prior to the pandemic. Already now, after 2 years of combining remote work with traditional work practices, companies are starting to accept the fact that remote work is here to stay. This in turn has driven increased adoption of remote work-enabling technologies such as VDI DaaS, and cloud computing.

While globally disruptive events like this pandemic can certainly influence work practices, there are also emerging technologies that can have a similar effect. Here are four of them.

Data has become a highly-prized asset in today’s business environment, and the data centres that store all the valuable information have thus, moved far past being mere storage facilities to becoming key business resources. Managing and maintaining a data centre however, is a multifaceted process that requires the right people, skills, and tools.

What makes managing a data centre more complex is the fact that the modern version of it is no longer just the rows of neatly-stacked on-premise IT infrastructure as they are often represented in stock images. Instead, the data centre now has extended beyond traditional boundaries and could be spread across multiple physical sites, colocations, and the cloud.

In this post, we discuss five key best practices that data centre administrators can implement to ensure that their IT infrastructure is operating at peak efficiency.