Maximizing the return on investment (ROI) from every portion of the budget is a basic business tactic—so basic that there are countless articles on “how to maximize ROI.” Being able to get more from the same (or smaller) expenditures is an attractive prospect for virtually any business.
One key area that’s ripe for ROI improvement in most modern organizations is in their IT infrastructure. IT can be a major expense, but it is a crucial part of modern business operations. Monitoring your organization’s IT infrastructure can help you identify ways to improve ROI for IT spend while keeping on top of details like your company’s bandwidth requirements, data storage needs, and more.
What is infrastructure monitoring? Why should you have a team for monitoring IT infrastructure? Who should be on this team?
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What Is Infrastructure Monitoring?
IT infrastructure monitoring is the practice of collecting and analyzing data from the company’s IT assets (data centers, servers, networks, hardware, software, etc.), policies, and processes to create greater IT visibility.
Organizations use infrastructure monitoring to collect data that they can then use to optimize their resources, processes, and policies to improve business results and their ROI from IT spend.
This often goes beyond simple data center monitoring. Intelligent monitoring tools are commonly used to deliver a “360 degree” view of an organization’s IT infrastructure—leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT) devices on the network and powerful analytical tools to monitor network performance and health in real time.
Why Should Your Organization Have an Infrastructure Monitoring Team?
Why should your own organization have a dedicated infrastructure monitoring team (either internal or external)? There are several reasons, such as:
- To Prevent Disruptions in Key Business Processes. It is extremely rare for any organization to be completely independent of IT these days. From communicating with customers, to storing important records, managing transactions, monitoring key business processes, and maintaining compliance with industry regulations, businesses need reliable IT infrastructure to manage their core processes. Infrastructure monitoring can be helpful for verifying the health and suitability of existing data center capabilities to prevent possible disruptions caused by insufficient bandwidth, data storage, or power.
- To Scale Business IT Expenses More Accurately. Like any other business unit, IT needs to have accurate projections for future use so it can be scaled efficiently. For example, what will the data center’s bandwidth and power requirements be six months from now? How about six years from now? Having accurate information about server use, power consumption, and more helps organizations better project their needs so they can scale to meet demand without wasting resources.
- To Identify Problems with IT Infrastructure Early and Make Optimizations. When there is no “IT transparency,” meaning that IT processes and assets are largely unknown, it is all too easy for there to be major issues that are not being addressed. Having a dedicated infrastructure monitoring team to watch out for potential issues can provide the transparency and insight needed to prevent cybersecurity breaches, service outages, and compliance issues. By identifying potential problems early on, it’s easier to implement fixes and prevent costly operational and reputational damage.
Here’s a hypothetical example of two businesses:
Company A has invested in data center tools to provide intelligent monitoring and has a team of individuals parsing that data to identify issues, project the expected growth of demand for IT resources, and more.
Company B has not made any investment into their IT infrastructure to set up monitoring. Instead, they follow the “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it” motto for minimizing expenses.
Both businesses are operating in the same industry and are of similar sizes. However, after a few months, Company A’s infrastructure monitoring team notices that their data center is needing a lot more bandwidth than they initially expected. While it isn’t at full capacity yet, the current rate of growth will bring it there soon.
So, they add a colocation data center and traffic routing tools to spread the load out—possibly creating a perimeter data center that’s more closely located to where traffic and requests are coming from. Because of this, they’re able to avoid a major bandwidth bottleneck and keep their business operations running smoothly.
Company B also runs into the same bandwidth problem as Company A. However, they did not anticipate the issue, so their data center runs into a critical failure one day as it gets overloaded with requests. This leads to extensive system downtime that results in:
- Lost Productivity. Employees unable to log into key apps or resources (or experience significant network lag) fall behind on tasks, leading to wasted time and effort.
- Lost Opportunities. Customers logging into the company’s systems are unable to complete transactions. This can cause many customers to reconsider their transactions or even to go to a competitor to get what they want.
- Brand Damage. Major service outages can cause damage to a company’s brand image among consumers and even other businesses. If outages are particularly frequent, then customers may complain and drive others away from the company that gave them a negative experience.
- Data Loss. Data is a crucial tool for modern businesses. From transaction data, to customer payment info, to records demonstrating compliance with key regulations, businesses need to keep data intact and safe. When files become damaged or corrupted because of problems with the organization’s infrastructure and processes, the losses incurred can be significant.
Because of Company A’s investment in infrastructure monitoring, they are able to anticipate the disruption and avoid service interruptions while Company B starts losing customers after their data center goes down for a couple of days. Disgruntled Company B customers then make the switch to Company A, further helping them outpace and outgrow their competitor.
Who Should Be on Your Infrastructure Monitoring Team?
So, who should you have on your infrastructure monitoring team? Preferably, it should be someone who:
- Has experience with using infrastructure monitoring tools;
- Knows how to account for seasonal use patterns when projecting potential growth in data center bandwidth requirements;
- Can analyze key performance metrics for early indications of potential problems and make recommendations for avoiding them; and
- Has the time and resources to set up and track alerts from intelligent monitoring tools.
Need help with intelligent infrastructure monitoring? vXchnge is here to help! With our intelligent monitoring tools, keeping track of your monitoring will be easier than ever.
From the very start, vXchnge has been dedicated to providing a “best in class” colocation data center experience. Our award-winning in\site platform is a standard feature of our colocation service that allows customers to manage their data center environment as easily as they would a data center that they had on-site.
With the in\site Mobile app, you can keep track of power utilization and bandwidth consumption in real time—helping you identify when power and bandwidth requirements are getting close to exceeding your data center’s capabilities. You can also easily manage and submit tickets with our 24/7/365 support center, remotely control data center access, and set up notifications for your collocated data center.
Experience the difference for yourself by signing up for a free demo of in/site now!
