Every business should aim for IT resilience as a long-term technology goal. IT resilience reflects a network or system’s ability to overcome the wear and tear of everyday operations, human error, and external disruptions. A big part of achieving overall business success is keeping technical disasters such as cyber crime to a minimum. Here are further details on how to focus on resilience.
Resilience Challenges
One of the biggest challenges to meet in order to achieve IT resilience is business continuity. According a recent IDG report, reducing or eliminating downtime should be a top priority. Even large companies like United Airlines can experience disaster, as they did when their flight management systems crashed. The results were massive flight cancellations and flight delays.
The IDG report emphasizes the following major challenges for IT:
- migration
- downtime
- disaster recovery
- cloud computing
- data sharing
- outsourcing
Big Data Issues
Every company should migrate its data to an upgraded system at some point. According to the IDG report, over 25% of survey respondents said that migrations took from 25 to 100 hours. A sixth of the participants claimed the process took longer than 100 hours. Nearly half of these IT technicians encountered migration failures, usually due to software compatibility issues.
A system can get plagued with downtime from operator errors that cause network crashes, which can be costly. Various natural disasters such as flooding or earthquakes can also disrupt business continuity. A disaster recovery plan can prevent major damage, but only 15% of IT professionals surveyed were confident about their plans.
The cloud has been the solution to many IT and business challenges, as over two-thirds of firms surveyed are using cloud services. The reason the cloud helps accelerate resilience is because it works as a partnership. That means it can make or break quality on many levels, so it’s best to find the right cloud provider and ensure all departments are using it properly. A further key to resilience is maintaining efficiency, consistency, and security when it comes to data sharing.
Overcoming IT Complexity
Clearly, one of the biggest challenges for IT beyond security is complexity, as observed in a recent Ponemon Institute study. The more organizations get involved with big data, the more complex gathering and generating information can potentially become. As the connection between the cloud and mobile devices advances, data must travel across more complex paths. Therefore, a top priority for all organizations should be to monitor networks proactively to minimize disruptions.
Conclusion
The key to IT resilience involves staying on top of cloud, mobile, and security developments. Big data continues to affect more and more companies, which increases demand for storage. As the tech industry becomes more complex, business owners will gain an advantage if they develop simplified solutions that save time and increase productivity.