What makes an effective IT Management Team?
IT Managers and Decision Makers, this was written for you.
IT Departments come in all different shapes and sizes. There are however some key elements I would recommend for effective IT management. It’s important to certainly have strategy.
Here is my list:
Asset Management and Risk Assessment
Time and time again you will need to know what your on hand IT Assets are and associated Risks to those assets. This is important and empowering knowledge to have to make recommendations or make decisions that can help add money back into budget. Its always good to know how much time is left on your IT assets and when to retire them as well as getting the most you can in return for the sale of used equipment. Understanding Risk is important so as to ensure your assets will be best protected and your interests are best met. So there are different formulas for determining this, what’s important is that you have established due diligence toward this area to protect your business from significant liabilities.
Change Control
With technology advancing every moment, it is very important to limit risk when implementing changes to your infrastructure and technology. It’s always good to have management on the same page when you are driving change. Also communication to employees is key to increasing change awareness. There are many aspects of change control, what is most important with regards to change is planning and communication. If you fail to plan you are planning to fail. And failure to communicate is a structural breakdown which will only drive distraction, confusion, and inefficiency.
Active measures to reduce costs by going Green
Being Green is a buzz phrase we have been hearing a lot about. What does it really mean to be Green? In my view it means just being more efficient. Does that mean working your employees to the bone with multi-tasking? No, absolutely not. You have the potential with building a Green working environment to motivate your employees without the pay raises per-se, ie. a dollar saved is a dollar earned. With technology today this is very much possible from the front line all the way back up to the top. There are a lot of ways to be Green and we certainly can help you do that, with the problems in today’s economy it is essential to save money in order to stay in business while maintaining your competitive edge.
Release Readiness
Release Readiness is very important in the Change Control and Project Management aspects. With there being a lot of change in technology its important to be ready to effectively implement those changes. They can be hardware or software. Its important to be proactive and provide due diligence in technology management, as the very efficiency you seek through it will simply go backward with immature or incorrect technology implementations.
IT Security
As more and more companies go virtual, and data is their value. It is important then that assets, availability, reliability, and performance all be examines and protected. Threats can come from many different directions. It is important to understand the threats and risks and take action to protect against them. So there are many different types of measures to be taken when building a Security Baseline. I listed this step later on because obtaining a full understanding of your IT Assets is key along with doing a Risk Assessment. These two elements will help management understand what security measures need to be taken. You are only as strong as your weakest link, also keep in mind your business is as valuable to you as your desire to stay in business. There is a great deal of cyberfraud and startups that literally steal from their competitors. If you value staying in business you simply cannot ignore IT Security and pure and proper implementation practices. Saving money in a foolish manner can put you more at risk. But doing things smarter will save you money. As long as there are cyber criminals there will always be a need for cyber security.
Effective Communications
Each of these are important as they develop well rounded focus as we tackle the most complicated and diverse IT issues. It’s important to run a tight ship that collectively bears a scalable setup, and adaptable setup. In my personal view innovative managers and decision makers can utilize effectively their abilities to keep their employees motivated while adding to bottom dollar.
Let me know how you do, with giving your focus to these principles.
Using Ubuntu Server as a Desktop and Cost Savings
Cost Savings and Technology advantages of Ubuntu Server
Most of you are familiar with GPL/GNU Open Source Software. I wanted to recommend a highly stable and cheap to free open source server. Ubuntu meaning ethic or humanist philosophy focusing on people’s allegiances and relations with each other. The meaning behind the them is something quite intrinsic to the creation of the technology. In a humanity sense open source software allows individuals, groups, or entire communities to contribute in some way to the development of the software. The overall output of the product is of higher quality, testing, and also more in line with what the user wants.
Since Ubuntu open source you have the option to change it. So yes this is Linux. I wanted to state however that Ubuntu is the most supported version of Linux out there, and that you can do anything with it as you would a Windows Server. You have have the option to turn it into a desktop with a simple command line entry such as this:
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
The wonderful thing about open source is you feel or get empowered through the transparency of what you observe. Also how you can customize and change things to better suit the needs of your IT department or Organization. So now on to the advantages. Ubuntu is a light weight server out of the box, or you can make it more robust. It can easily be converted into any type of back end server ie: File, Web, Email, Media, Authentication, Proxy, Code Repository, Load Balancing. Just about anything you want it can be turned into that. So let me point you to the documentation for reference so you will be able to observe and learn or consider the cost savings you can benefit from.
At HPD Global – VIT Cloud Services we run Ubuntu and several other open source solutions on top of traditional Microsoft Windows Server. We feel this brings greater value to our customers as they have the option to tailor the technologies we offer to better suit their needs. Contact us today for more IT Profitability.
SaaS: Software as a Service
Thanks to the internet, high speed connectivity, and rapid development of applications over the internet, we have the birth of Virtual IT – Cloud Services. Imagine if you will the ability to have your IT Department totally running from the cloud for a flat rate? Its happening. A lot of services can be provided through SaaS (Software as a Service) via the Internet, these being:
- Backups
- Security Baseline
- PC Optimization
- Malware removal
- Remote Desktop Troubleshooting
- Analysis
- Web Development
- Internet Marketing SEO/SEM
- Programming
- Patching
Most of your Help Desk, IT Administration, and whole IT Department functions can be outsourced with high ROI.
Would you like to outsource your IT to a well reputable 100% usa firm? We are making that happen for many.
Fortune 500 IT Practices: Small to Medium Businesses
The Questions:
Don’t you wish you could have a budget to allow your IT departments to flourish without the additional cost of a full time staff, additional contractors, or H1B’s to further explode your budget into the point of no return?
Don’t you want to know if your IT infrastructure us functioning as successfully as that of a Fortune 500 company?
If you answered yes to either of these questions, then look no further; High Performance Delivered Global IT Consulting (100% US Based with US employees) is here to help you with all your technical needs.
With over 30 years of experience in Information Technology (IT) we have the solutions that will help you cut cost and increase your performance for your day to day Information Technology operations.
