Member Article

Six Ways to Futureproof your Linux Infrastructure

Discover how you can future proof your Linux infrastructure and improve your business’ processes.

Future-proofing isn’t just about investing in the latest hardware and buying into the latest technology to keep your IT team happy. There are sound business reasons to do it and sensible, cost effective strategies.

1. Budget

IT is a depreciating asset. Before you commit to major capital expenditure on renewal, look at converting to a hybrid Cloud system.

Retain existing hardware but move some workload to a Cloud environment, and onto current accounts rather than capital expense.

2. Sweated Assets

When times are tough every organisation tries to economise and sweat its assets, but beware of storing up ‘technical debt’. The longer you delay the more problematic it becomes to implement a new strategy.

If every machine is working flat out and every member of the IT team is straining to keep things going, who is going to make changes?

Look at bringing in a Managed Services Provider (MSP) who can move some workload to the Cloud and help you make the best use of your hardware.

3. Decoupling

In a traditional data centre every device is specified for a particular purpose and hard-wired into the system. It’s technically difficult to change anything, and therefore expensive.

A MSP can help you to create a modular system based on commodity hardware and Cloud services where any part - from a single machine to an entire application solution - can be swapped out without bringing the whole thing crashing down.

4. Standardisation

Supporting different types of hardware that are running different software stacks is time consuming.

The future-proofed IT system runs Standard Operating Environments on virtualised resources in-house, in a public Cloud or in a hybrid Cloud set-up.

5. Distribution

Commercial property is expensive - acquiring more convenient property close to your existing operations may be impossible.

Cloud systems are not constrained by geography and planning laws, you can have all the computing power you need supplied by one or many specialist providers.

6. IT Department

Rather than specialising in arcane pieces of hardware or software, your IT department can become subject matter specialists in using best practice systems management tools to benefit your organisation.

Takeaways:

When looking to future-proof your Linux infrastructure, you need to:

• Encourage your IT department to become subject matter specialists
• You can avoid building technical debt by using a Managed Services Provider (MSP)
• Distribution of data is essential and the Cloud offers a fantastic solution.

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This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Mitchell .