Going Ahead with Infrastructure Management Projects

The pace at which business is carried out these days has increased considerably. Leading business houses, in practically every sector of the economy such as finance, manufacturing, retail and trading are trying to move towards a business model in which information sharing, business processes and transactions can be carried out in the span of a few minutes, if not less. This calls for the development of an IT infrastructure that is equipped to handle multiple tasks and ensure that they are smoothly completed within the stipulated time frame. Over the years, the prevalent notion was that IT infrastructure was all about software and hardware. Management of such an infrastructure thus meant accessing them and their subsequent installation. But the current scenario has given a different dimension to the coinage and its implications are way beyond the earlier perception. IT infrastructure management takes into account the overall IT policy and strategy of the organisation, the installation and management of diverse components, administration and security arrangements, application development, vendor management, IS audit, and integration and management of the complete system. IT infrastructure jobs thus involve all these and much more. The IT infrastructure set up in an organisation encompasses one and all, be it the front end or back end staff, other employees, suppliers, partners and even customers. Critical business processes rely on the infrastructure and therefore it becomes necessary that the development, maintenance and repair of the infrastructure is entrusted in safe hands. As the timeline of the processes are limited from months to weeks, business functions need to run round the clock. The importance of maintaining such a vast network is thus quite apparent. Businesses comprehend the need of the hour and understand that IT infrastructure management holds the key to how well their business fares. Infrastructure management thus takes into account: Testing technologies and IT infrastructure monitoring that offer service assurance Enterprise customer relationship management Optimization of IT infrastructure in order to fulfil business requirements Technologies required to create business service views Business Process Management Capacity planning processes and implementation of best practices Most organisations have separate IT management department and there is a dedicated team working to meet the requirements of diverse business processes. Such a team is placed under an IT manager. The most difficult part of the task for an IT manager is a system crash that can lead to complete data loss. It is necessary to minimise the risk of such a situation by: Securing the systems Securing the different facilities Timely disaster recovery A highly experienced staff who have the necessary security clearance Distributed data, power and process sourceThese can be countered by facilitating and enterprise hosting environment that is equipped with automated monitoring system, firewalls, network and physical security and intrusion detection. These tasks are to be carried out under the supervision of the team leader and this is carried by those involved in infrastructure manager jobs. The ability of organisations to exploit sourcing and service solutions, management and operations of the IT setup depends on the cost and availability of the services and applications. If these are not taken into account, then it may lead to cost overruns, outright failure and overpayment.