Despite the availability of managed services and cloud computing, a Rackspace survey reveals that a majority of mid-sized businesses in the UK and US spend 56 percent – more than half – of their time each month on troubleshooting and server management services, cutting the amount of time dedicated to value-adding services to a mere 28 percent.
Businesses are continuing to cling to on-premise servers to an extent where managing an in-house IT infrastructure is becoming a major hassle. The top issues regarding on-premise IT infrastructure management include requiring the concerned staff to be available around the clock, expensive hardware maintenance, and the increasing cost of buying new servers.
Cons of relying on in-house IT resources
The idea of buying your own systems, building your own services, and running it all on your own seems like a cost-effective option most of the times. However, doing it all within the company has various drawbacks that businesses often tend to neglect…
- Staff turnover: employees can leave for a variety of reasons, but if key staff members managing your internal IT systems leave the company, you could be left with a daunting task of picking up and running critical environment pieces.
- Capital depreciation: hosting resources and data internally will require you to purchase expensive equipment on a frequent basis. Also, it can be accompanied by ‘surprise and costly’ investments such as hiring maintenance vendors or utility maintenance costs. It does not translate into a stable recurring expense.
- Tied-up resources: the amount of resources tied up to in-house IT processes should be considered, as it will determine how much resources are free to perform other important tasks specific to your company. Too many resources dedicated to the internal infrastructure may affect other departments of your business.
- Insider threats: this is one of the biggest concerns for internal IT teams. Malicious insiders can gain unauthorized access to the data stored on internal systems, as most businesses do not keep internal checks or create a regularity policy to scrutinize employee activity. Keeping critical information offsite provides safety as the data is stored in multiple locations.
A better way to store and manage IT resources
Businesses devote all kinds of support functions, from ensuring adequate temperature in server rooms to maintaining network connectivity. And the associated costs with backups and redundancies could easily make the IT department appear as a costly section of your business. It’s not ideal. Companies have the option of choosing colocation services to reduce resource-intensive IT infrastructure costs. This can free them up to redeploy resources to other areas of the business.
Apart from colocation, you can also move the IT infrastructure entirely to the cloud. And reliable cloud service providers don’t require you to alter your applications to work in a predefined cloud environment. The cloud can be customized to support applications in a unique and responsive infrastructure that is tailor-made to your needs.
Taking advantage of colocation and the cloud will also ensure critical infrastructure security. Top service providers will tailor their services to help you address compliance requirements in a documented, cost-effective fashion. Further, 24/7 monitoring ensures there are no overlapping weaknesses at both ends (the client and the customer).
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