Designing IT Infrastructure to Meet Your Business Goals
Business needs and goals change over time, and so does the infrastructure that is required to support operations. If your business is growing, streamlining operations, merging with another business, launching new products or services, facing tougher competition, or evaluating a new opportunity for growth, there are many reasons to review or redesign all or part of your IT infrastructure. Another common reason for a comprehensive IT review is that technology changes quickly. A great system plan from three years ago may not be your best option today.
“IT infrastructure often involves a wide array of specialized or expensive technology, so how can your company make the best choice for your needs?”
The first step is to recognize that a change is needed. This usually comes from employee complaints, management pre-planning or an IT Department assessment. Employees and management will want to know which technology will get the job done and how much it will cost. The IT Department will want to know how to convince management that a change in technology will promote business growth or how to make sure the department can deliver something that will meet the needs of employees and management. The solution is to help management and the IT Department work closely together when planning IT infrastructure changes.
Briefly, let’s clarify exactly what is meant by IT infrastructure. IT Infrastructure is defined as the policies, processes, people, hardware, software, networks, vendors, and customer interfaces required to collect, analyze, and deliver the information and communications required to make your business successful. Typical parts of an IT infrastructure might be your phone system, internet provider, servers, backup hardware, disaster recovery plan, web site, or IT Department staff and staff training.
IT Infrastructure can be a considerable investment for an organization and the following questions must be answered before any changes are implemented:
· What benefits will our employees and customers see from this investment?
· How will this investment drive profits?
· What are the risks, either assumed or managed with this investment?
· What is the time frame for this investment and its returns?
· What are the total costs and benefits of this investment over time?
· How does this investment compare to the alternatives?
The best way to design IT Infrastructure is to start with the ideal answers to these questions and work backwards to the most cost effective solution for your business. To accomplish this, let’s break down the design process into four phases:
I. Define your business goals and the starting points of your current IT infrastructure.
II. Identify options and eliminate solutions that will not work.
III. Perform a cost benefit analysis on the remaining options
IV. Implement the best solution
Define Goals and Starting Points
It is important in this stage that the goals are business goals rather than technology goals. Your business goals should include input from all areas impacted by a potential change in IT infrastructure such as management, personnel, marketing, planning, manufacturing, data security, government regulation compliance, employees, and most importantly, customers. Even when goals are clear on specific projects, before implementing a technology change, we will want to make sure that solutions do not counter other organizational goals or miss opportunities to meet goals in other areas.
Starting points should be defined as both business and technology oriented. A current sales volume might be a business oriented starting point with a goal of a 20% increase over the next 6 months. A technology oriented starting point might look like: three months remaining on a T1 contract costing $600.00 per month for a data rate of 1.45 Mb of internet connectivity that is used at 100% capacity during peak times and requires a more robust solution to promote future growth. A business goal might be that we want to increase the responsiveness of your web site so that customers using it at peak times do not get frustrated and purchase from your competition. Technical information about the existing environment, costs, and performance are critical to later steps in the plan development and must be included in this phase.
Identify Options and Eliminate Solutions that Will Not Work
This is the technical stage where we will identify all options then weed out the ones that will not work or will result in less than optimal performance. An IT infrastructure plan will include such things as current infrastructure configuration, policies, procedures, people, and vendors. Often there are options to simply avoid a problem, or a non technical solution that meets the same goal. Vendors may have an add on for your current system that may be less costly than a re-design. Planning for the future should include how long each part of the infrastructure can grow and how long it will last. Some parts of the infrastructure may be scalable while others may not be. Technology changes should also be considered if an emerging technology will not be available to meet your short term goals, it could be incorporated into a future expansion. While there is a cost associated with conducting research in order to provide the most accurate performance metrics needed to determine the best options, the investment in research is worth avoiding costly omissions or mistakes in the final IT infrastructure plan.
Perform a Cost Benefit Analysis on the Remaining Options
To make the best investment possible for your business, each option should be compared to the others, and compared to taking no action at this time. The time frame to implement each solution will be identified along with the estimated time to measurable benefits. At this point we can start to identify the costs of hardware, software, power, monthly charges, a demonstration of the proposed solution, management costs, support staff salaries and training, the impact of any downtime on on-going operations, and a roll-out test to validate the plan and identify any remaining issues. Once these questions are answered, both management and the IT Department will have the information necessary to make good IT infrastructure decisions that are aligned with the goals of the business. On large projects with long implementation phases, a review of changing technologies and business goals should happen periodically to ensure that continuing with the IT infrastructure plan remains the best option, or to make additional changes to meet changing business needs.
Conclusion
Designing an IT infrastructure plan that meets your current and future business goals is well worth the time and energy required. Mistakes or lost opportunities can be expensive and limit growth in ways that easily justify investing the time needed for a good plan. If IT personnel are already overworked, the timeline for planning is short, or familiarity with new technologies is not readily available, J.P. Schwartz, Inc. can work with your organization at all levels to ensure that your IT infrastructure plan is the right one for your business. Contact J.P. Schwartz, Inc. today to find out how we can assist your organization to design an IT infrastructure plan that meets your business needs. Call us at (303) 482-1242 or contact us by e-mail at info@jpschwartz.com. Our offices are located in the Boulder Colorado and Denver Colorado metropolitan areas, but we consult for companies nationwide.
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