A company with high IT maturity is characterized by strong, efficient, and secure IT processes and IT support responsibilities that work closely alongside other areas of the organization to proactively solve problems and drive business growth. To reach IT maturity, you’ll need to focus on continuous improvement in multiple key areas, one of which is infrastructure support.
Your business’s core IT infrastructure is made up of servers, networks, cloud applications, and its virtual machine. In a mature organization, these different areas work together in harmony, supported by functions like encryption, network patching, and endpoint detection and response.
In the third part of our series on achieving IT maturity, we’ll take a look at your IT support responsibilities, why infrastructure support is so important, and what you can do to improve it.
Why Are IT Support Responsibilities Essential for Your Infrastructure?
Without a highly functioning core infrastructure, your organization will never reach IT maturity. Everything needs to work as intended, at all times, in alignment with all other parts of the business. This requires constant support.
IT support responsibilities refer to the work that needs to happen all the time to keep your infrastructure working. Without this constant work, you risk falling victim to a range of issues like connectivity issues, reduced performance, and greater vulnerability to cyber threats. This, in turn, can slow down your business, lead to significant financial loss, stunt your growth, and even lead to highly damaging disasters.
By staying on top of its IT support responsibilities, your IT team can keep the most important elements of your infrastructure running smoothly at all times, allowing your business to move beyond constant problems and delays and start confidently growing. So how can you achieve this?
How to Improve Your IT Support Responsibilities
As always, the best place to start when it comes to improving your IT support responsibilities is with an assessment of the functions you currently have in place. Which ones are working well, which need improvement, and which should be prioritized? Here’s a checklist of some common, important infrastructure support functions:
- Servers. Your servers are necessary for hosting applications, managing your network’s resources, and storing your data assets. This requires a range of support tasks, like maintaining hardware, keeping systems updated, and making sure security patches are in place.
- Virtual machine (VM). VMs allow you to run multiple operating systems on just one server, with each behaving like a completely separate computer. Support for your VM requires managing the software, allocating resources, and creating and configuring new VMs.
Storage. Your storage systems should allow you to easily and securely store all the data assets you need and be easily accessible whenever your authorized team members need something. Maintaining your storage infrastructure depends on support functions like capacity planning, data backup and recovery, and making sure data is always available.
- Network. Network infrastructure is made up of routers, switches, and firewalls overseen by network management software. This requires constant maintenance through functions like managing configurations, monitoring performance, and putting the right security measures in place.
- Cloud. If your business relies on cloud computing, through solutions like IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS, you’ll need to provide cloud support functions. These take the form of managing cloud resources, making sure your cloud tools integrate smoothly with your on-premise infrastructure, and building strong cloud security processes and best practices in your operations.
- Infrastructure disk encryption. This is the process of encrypting the data on your various storage devices to prevent unauthorized access. Support functions that apply here include implementing and configuring encryption wherever needed, managing encryption keys, training users on security best practices, and ensuring compliance with all necessary data privacy regulations.
- Infrastructure patching systems. Patching systems are in place to apply software updates and security patches wherever they’re needed in your infrastructure. Support here involves developing and overseeing patch management policies, testing patches before deploying them, and making sure all security updates are in place at the right time.
- Endpoint detection and response (EDR). EDR involves constantly scanning and monitoring the endpoints of your network and IT assets to quickly identify and respond to vulnerabilities or areas of concern to prevent cyber attacks. Support for EDR involves deploying and updating tools, monitoring alerts, and implementing incident response plans across the organization.
The most important thing to remember about your IT support responsibilities is that they all work together. Think about how each function interacts with the other functions and ties into the organization as a whole — beyond IT.
Improve Your IT Support Responsibilities With DYOPATH
At DYOPATH, infrastructure support is one of many areas we focus on to help our clients achieve IT maturity. We’ll work with you to get the right processes and tools in place to help your teams provide effective and ongoing support in all areas of your infrastructure.
To learn more about how we help companies like yours achieve IT maturity, check out The CIO’s Blueprint for IT Maturity.
