Your company’s server is the most important part of your IT infrastructure. Think of it as the brain, or heart, of your business, enabling all other processes and systems to operate. In order to do so effectively, it needs to be working at optimum levels, so when it starts to become less reliable, or to display signs of wear and tear, it may be time to consider whether it has reached its use by date.
While it may still work, the resources needed to keep the server going may begin to outweigh the benefits of maintaining the status quo, at which point investing in a new server becomes a priority. Here, we outline what you need to consider when it comes to your server, and how an outsourced IT support service in London can help you make the right decisions when it comes to this important tech investment.
The Costs of Not Investing in a New Server
In a recent blog on finding the right tech solutions to fit your budget, we mentioned that many companies operate their IT infrastructure with an ‘if it ain’t broke…’ approach. If the server still works, it can be hard for the CTO to convince the company of the ROI of an IT investment in a large capital expense they don’t see as necessary. However, it is worth pointing out the costs involved in keeping the existing server, and these include:
- Increased maintenance and monitoring
- The potential loss of productivity due to decreased operational efficiency
- Increased cooling and power demands and ongoing storage space requirements
- The continuous need for upgraded software integration to accommodate new business requirements
There are also some tell-tale signs that your server is no longer up to the task at hand, and when any of the following start to happen, it really is time to consider a new server to avoid the costs of poor performance, decreasing efficiency, or an outright system failure:
- Louder fan drives (your server’s cry for help)
- It has reached beyond 80% capacity
- The warranty is out of date
- An increase in tech hiccups
The Benefits of a New Server
Technology is advancing at such a rate that hardware such as a server bought only three years ago will by now be far less capable than what is available today. For any business looking to innovate and expand, or even just to compete, that is an important consideration.
Today’s servers can offer a far better CPU and memory, and so are capable of greater efficiency and can do far more than a three-year-old server. In short, they provide a better performance using less power. With greater capabilities, they demand less space, less maintenance, less cooling, and at the end of the day, fewer resources to keep them running and meeting the demands of the business.
An up to date new server can also decrease the cost of accompanying software that needs to be licensed every year. Software licenses are attached to CPU cores, which are fed by memory and storage. The more performance you get out of each processing core, the fewer licenses you need, the lower your costs will be, and the more performance you’ll get out of the apps you’re licensing.
The bottom line here is that licenses hit your budget every year as an operating expense, whereas a hardware upgrade is a one-time, multi-year investment that benefits you for the life of the server.
How Outsourced IT Support Can Help with New Server Integration
If you convince your business of the benefits of a new server, the next step is its implementation. Of course, this needs to be done quickly and with the minimum of fuss in order to ensure business continuity, and this is where hiring an outsourced IT support team in London can be a wise decision. Here’s why:
- A reputable IT support service can not only install and integrate your new server into your existing IT infrastructure while you focus on more day to day tasks, they can first assess your business requirements, run an IT audit to understand how this new hardware will fit into your IT roadmap, and advise on the server specifications that will suit your needs. This will ensure the maximum utilisation of every server resource.
- Your outsourced IT support team can also take care of server security to ensure your systems are protected from malware, ransomware and other cyber security threats, and if they are also experts in GDPR compliance, they can also ensure that your entire IT infrastructure complies with data protection regulations. Initial and continuous security audits can be complemented by 24/7 monitoring to analyse usage, detecting any suspicious or threatening activity that may result in costly disruptions to business, and act on them accordingly, as well as implementing any necessary upgrades or patches.
- Monitoring the server should also extend to ensuring business-critical services never drop, and your outsourced IT support team can act as a virtual CTO to analyse usage, speed, etc to guarantee efficiency, predicting when upgrades will be needed and implementing them without fuss as part of a proactive machine maintenance service.
- Backup and disaster recovery can also be provided as part of the service, ensuring your server has the capacity to securely backup all business-critical data, and perform data recovery should the unthinkable happen.
- Your IT support team can also advise on the best usage of cloud computing and help you to implement a hybrid IT solution that enables your business to avail of both traditional in-house server and cloud capacity and functionality, and integrate each into your IT infrastructure seamlessly.
- One of the major benefits of hiring an outsourced IT support team is that they can provide a flexible and scalable service model you can use as an OpEx investment, choosing how long they are needed for. So, whether you just want them to install your new server, or would prefer that they provide ongoing monitoring and maintenance, you decide on the level of investment you want or need, based on your requirements and your IT budget.
Your company’s server must run efficiently in order to ensure your business can run smoothly, but making the decision to invest in a new model, and putting the resources into installing and integrating it, can take a lot of time and energy. Hiring an IT support team to take care of all aspects of new server deployment and maintenance, however, means you can leave this task to them while you focus on keeping the business running.
The team at pebble.it can provide you with all the advice and technical know-how you need to make the decision regarding a new server, and can integrate it into your IT infrastructure and continue to monitor and update it as needed.
Get in touch to find out more, or take the first step towards finding the IT support you need by booking an IT audit with us:
