Your IT infrastructure, the key to your company's growth

A company's IT infrastructure is, in a way, the skeleton that allows all its organs to function properly without any problems. The management of servers, data, storage, networks, hardware and software are all underlying issues, yet they are crucial if the company's business is not to be impacted by an information system that is too fragile.

With the digital transformation of businesses and the acceleration of virtualisation issues, the objective today is to guarantee users systems and tools that facilitate their work and boost performance.

But how can this be achieved? And with which tools? Appvizer answers this question throughout this article.

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IT infrastructure: definition

What is a company's IT infrastructure?

The IT infrastructure groups together all of a company's hardware and software equipment. All these elements, connected together, form the IT infrastructure.

It is also known as an IT system, IT architecture or IT network. This equipment needs to be installed and maintained properly so that the company can make the most of it.

What equipment is involved? IT equipment includes

• Workstations (desktops, laptops),
• screens
• peripherals (mouse, keyboard, etc.),
• servers (racks, towers)
• routers,
• telephone equipment, including smartphones,
• cabling,
• software,
• applications, etc.

The role of IT architecture is to provide company employees with easy, continuous and secure access to the company's applications and data. To simplify :

Poorly maintained IT infrastructure = a brake on your company's growth

Who manages the IT infrastructure?

There is a job within the company dedicated to IT infrastructure management: IT infrastructure managers, or IT infrastructure project managers, or systems engineers or network engineers.

Their job is to ensure the smooth running and availability of the IT infrastructure for all users. They are the guarantors of hardware and software maintained in good working order and of the technological developments affecting the company.

This involves :

• setting up an IT infrastructure organisation
• defining and anticipating hardware and software requirements,
• installing IT equipment
• maintaining the IT infrastructure,
• replacing worn-out, damaged, out-of-use or obsolete equipment,
• user support,
• managing a department if the company has a team dedicated to IT infrastructure.

On premise vs cloud

Not all businesses have the same IT architecture requirements. Their size, their sector of activity or simply their business are all criteria that need to be taken into account when defining the IT infrastructure that best suits them, so as to guarantee optimum access to data for all users.

There are several hosting solutions available to businesses:

• physical infrastructure, known as on-premise: all the equipment (routers, servers, switches, etc.) is hosted on the company's premises ;
• infrastructure in the cloud : the company subcontracts the installation, management and maintenance of this equipment to an external service provider, so the equipment is located outside the company's premises.

Note: physical infrastructures are gradually giving way to cloud infrastructures, but both offer advantages.

The role of IT infrastructure in the enterprise

The stakes are changing: the digital transformation of businesses involves not only the tools they use, but also the management of their IT infrastructure.

Streamlining IT architecture management

In reality, the question is no longer so much what equipment to choose (servers, storage, network, etc.), but how to rationalise the management of the IT architecture, which must support the company's growth.

IT agility: a criterion of competitiveness

The ability of businesses to be agile in terms of their IT infrastructure is becoming a competitive criterion .

This is known as " IT agility": the aim is to offer "tools and methodologies for creating, developing, supervising and securing applications and services quickly and easily" (source: Le Monde informatique, DSI agile: la vision globale d'IBM).

Interconnecting equipment for an agile infrastructure

🛠️ The key to success: a complete interconnection between equipment and tools, whether they are located on the company's site or in the cloud. This includes APIs (application programming interfaces), which enable agile use of different software applications.

Intelligent data management

Intelligent data management is also important:

1. storage
2. use
3. and identification

must be at the heart of companies' concerns, so that data is no longer multiplied, but rather processed and reused more easily.

IT infrastructures and virtualisation

Definition: what is virtualisation?

Virtualisation makes it possible to create a virtual version of physical equipment, such as servers, applications, storage systems or virtual networks. The aim? To rationalise and optimise the use of physical resources to provide users with flexibility and agility, all in a virtual environment.

This is known as a virtual machine or VM. Each virtual machine has its own operating system, but several virtual machines can share the same physical infrastructure.

©️ Infhor

The advantage of virtualisation is simple: a high-performance, flexible, available and secure IT system for all applications. This is made possible by the simplification of physical constraints.

Please note: virtualisation is not synonymous with the cloud!

The benefits of virtualisation

• Reduced costs :
  • installation
  • maintenance costs,
• Better load balancing,
• Simplified management of IT resources,
• Space savings (fewer physical servers needed, for example),
• Energy savings, since less equipment is running simultaneously, which also means financial savings,
• Service continuity,
• Centralisation of IT resources,
• Greater availability: migration or back-up operations, for example, can be carried out while the system is running, without interrupting service,
• Enhanced disaster recovery,
• Improved data backup in the event of an incident,
• Greater mobility for users, as applications can be accessed from any workstation or operating system,
• Enhanced security.

Example of a virtual IT infrastructure

QSP Systems has summarised a virtual IT infrastructure model in the following diagram:

©️ QSP Systems

Note: each company has its own specificities and needs. It is difficult to generalise an example of IT architecture virtualisation. This diagram is intended as an illustration to help you understand what we are talking about.

How can an IT architecture be made solid and efficient?

How can you ensure that the whole business can rely on your infrastructure to deliver results, without any service discontinuity blocking them, for example?

The desired objective is a relevant infrastructure that meets the specific needs of your organisation in terms of availability, responsiveness and performance.

Here are a few things to bear in mind to achieve this.

Business continuity

Ensure that the network and data are accessible at all times. Have a disaster recovery plan in place so that, even if something goes wrong, users do not suffer the consequences and business continues seamlessly.

Application performance

Loading time or system response speed are crucial elements that have an impact on the use of applications; they can become a barrier to users if they are not sufficient.

The overall performance of the business therefore depends on application performance. This is also true for users outside the company: a poorly performing application tarnishes the company's image.

Flexible infrastructure evolution

It is important to anticipate future changes so that the IT infrastructure remains robust for users. As a business grows, so does its IT infrastructure, creating new requirements in terms of equipment, storage capacity, speed of response and so on.

This is why the right applications and processes need to be put in place so that the infrastructure can be modified without being overloaded, in order to keep pace with the company's growth.

System security

The infrastructure must be built in such a way as to avoid security threats, which could result in the loss of data, for example. Applications and physical equipment must be protected to avoid these threats and guarantee continuity of service under optimum conditions.

This can be achieved, for example, by standardising access: minimising entry points to applications by providing direct, secure access to users.

Storage capacity

Finally, make sure that the storage capacity is sufficient for all the company's data and that this capacity increases as the company grows. Take care to ensure that increasing storage capacity does not complicate the IT architecture to the point of slowing down performance.

IT trends: what's changing in terms of infrastructure?

The Ten trends redefining enterprise IT infrastructure study conducted by Arul Elumalai, Kara Sprague, Sid Tandon, and Lareina Yee for McKinsey & Company, identified several trends that are revolutionising enterprise IT architecture.

Some familiar trends are gathering pace, such as the use of the cloud, cybersecurity and as-a-service consumption for both software and hardware.

The next trends to watch :

• the growth of DevOps for software development, but also for the management of IT operations and infrastructure;
• container-first architectures : container virtualisation could become the leading deployment unit in the cloud, ahead of virtual machines;
• the exponential growth of artificial intelligence, with its ever-increasing volume of data and computing power.

Why use software to manage your IT infrastructure?

Benefits for the company

As with all business activities, IT infrastructure management, which is often the responsibility of the Information Systems Department or network engineers, can be optimised and automated using dedicated software.

You use a tool for your accounting, so why not do the same for your IT architecture? The advantages are

• better organisation and allocation of IT equipment
• more accurate monitoring of hardware and software,
• better equipment maintenance
• anticipation of replacement needs ,
• an inventory of hardware and software,
• orders and follow-up with suppliers,
• increased efficiency,
• improved performance .

Which software should you choose?

We offer three software packages to optimise the management of your IT infrastructure.

WhatsUp Gold

WhatsUp Gold is a comprehensive, modular and highly intuitive network monitoring tool for SMBs and SMEs that helps you supervise your entire IT infrastructure (peripherals, bandwidth usage, servers, applications, etc.) in real time. Thanks to intelligent and scalable network monitoring features, you can detect, isolate and resolve the slightest malfunction in just a few clicks.

The main advantages of WhatsUp Gold :

• a dashboard updated in real time that reports on all your interconnections,
• support for multiple scripting languages (VBscript, PowerShell, SQL queries, etc.)
• automation of your workload via powerful REST APIs, and much more!

Asset View Suite

Clarilog's Asset View Suite solution enables you to monitor your entire IT estate in real time and simplify technical and administrative management. The software features a customisable dashboard for rapid monitoring of your indicators. Alarms make IT asset management proactive, so you don't forget to replace certain equipment, for example.

It's quick to deploy , taking less than two hours. The publisher also promises a rapid return on investment in less than a year.

Flex Infra

Flex Infra is developed by the Scriba group and offers SMEs the opportunity to manage their infrastructure with an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) offering . The solution provides outsourced management of your cloud infrastructure, so you can manage your information system with complete peace of mind.

The tool guarantees :

• proactive supervision of your infrastructure
• an environment tailored to your number of users,
• hosting in France for maximum security.

Scriba also offers on-premise, cloud and hybrid infrastructure management. Their suite of complementary tools manages backup, access filtering to secure data flows and an anti-spam and anti-cyber attack solution.

VMware NSX Data Center

Video in English with French subtitles

VMware NSX Data Center is designed for large enterprises that want to improve the management of their infrastructure using a powerful and comprehensive tool.

It enables :

• virtualisation of network and security functions,
• the virtual cloud network, a software layer that extends from the data centre to the cloud,
• data centre networking
• network automation,
• native cloud applications for consistent, automated policies across all types of infrastructure.

Automation, operational efficiency and security are the three terms that best characterise VMware NSX Data Center.

The publisher provides users with high-quality documentation to make it easy to get started.

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Don't neglect the management of your IT infrastructure

As we have seen, a company's IT infrastructure should not be neglected. At first glance, its management may not seem to add as much value to the company as any other department, but it is the foundation that enables the whole business to work together efficiently.

Technologies are evolving rapidly, and so are the solutions they bring to businesses. It is still all too common for IT management to be relegated to second place. Today's tools make it possible to simplify and automate IT management, with a rapid return on investment.

Improve the performance of your IT infrastructure, and your whole business will benefit!