Technology is crucial in every facet of modern business. When effectively interconnected, technology has the potential to enhance communication, streamline operations, and boost overall productivity.
Successfully navigating the complexities of infrastructure components is vital for success. Infrastructure is more than just a technical detail—it’s a strategic asset that can determine whether your organization meets its objectives. A robust IT infrastructure is a powerful asset that supports your objectives and growth in today’s digital landscape, where efficiency and reliability are paramount.
What are the different types of infrastructure?
The three types of IT infrastructure are traditional on-premises (on-prem), cloud, and hybrid.
On-premises
An on-prem infrastructure consists of standard hardware and software elements and encompasses facilities, data centers, servers, networking hardware, desktop computers, and enterprise application software solutions. This type of infrastructure demands dedicated power, physical space, and financial resources. It is commonly deployed on-premises for exclusive company use and when security, performance, and latency are paramount.
Cloud
With cloud, users can access the infrastructure over the Internet to obtain resources needed through virtualization. A service provider hosts the IT environment on its servers. Virtualization generates a simulated or virtual computing environment rather than a physical one, which involves the creation of computer-generated replicas of hardware, operating systems, storage devices, and other components.
Hybrid
A hybrid infrastructure configuration combines on-premises data centers, private clouds, and/or public clouds. The deployment of operating systems and applications within this environment is flexible based on business needs and requirements.
What are the core components of an IT infrastructure?
Hardware
An IT infrastructure encompasses extensive equipment, applications, and delivering services to the business and its users. Hardware includes physical devices like servers and computers that serve as the core of your business network. The typical components include:
- Servers: These computers host enterprise applications and execute computing tasks.
- Storage: Storage involves subsystems—like disk arrays—for storing and safeguarding application and business data.
- Networking: Networking involves the equipment necessary to establish a business network, including switches, routers, firewalls, and other cybersecurity components
- Cables and racks: Numerous wires connect IT equipment, physical server racks, and hardware within the facility.
- Management platforms: Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) platforms are essential for supervising and administering the infrastructure. These platforms report on system health, availability, capacity, and configuration.
Software
Software refers to applications, management systems, and operating systems that run on servers. The software handles various tasks and maintains security for peace of mind. Software-defined services aim to expedite application deployment while simultaneously consolidating all services into a standardized managed setup. Each service can offer metrics and instrumentation to help administrators build a comprehensive view of the application and environment.
The most common types of software include databases, business applications, collaboration and productivity applications, security applications, and management applications. These software applications are used to manage everything from customer relations to tracking inventory, optimizing processes, and boosting productivity.
Networking
Networks are what keep the information in your business flowing. That flow connects devices for your customers, suppliers, and employees.
A wide area network (WAN) connects devices, networks, and locations over a large geographical area, allowing businesses to transmit and receive data across remote locations and facilitating communication and collaboration between branches, offices, and remote workers. WANs help businesses that operate in multiple locations, allowing them to share resources and data and centralize their IT management. They are also necessary for remote workers to connect securely to the company’s network from anywhere.
Over the past decade, software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) evolved as a cloud virtualization networking solution that improves speed, security, and network availability over traditional WANs. Additionally, secure access service edge (SASE, pronounced “sassy”) provides a suite of cloud-enabled security tools that build on the dependability of SD-WAN.
Learn more: Ten essential benefits of a managed SASE solution
Data storage and capacity management
Storage can exist on dedicated external storage arrays, software-defined and hyper-converged servers, locally on servers and endpoints, and on remote cloud-based storage platforms. Management tools for storage infrastructure must ensure that storage resources are available to users, secure, recoverable, and possess sufficient capacity and performance.
Capacity management is crucial in ensuring that the storage infrastructure has ample capacity for applications, files, databases, utilities, and other resources. Applications monitor various storage parameters, including active and static storage, the number of storage transactions, and changes in storage activity. This data provides administrators with insights to scale resources up or down. It helps identify when additional storage is required, allowing administrators to order and install equipment in time for production use.
Learn more: Infrastructure as a Service: Bringing cloud flexibility and consumption to your data center
How do the critical components of an IT infrastructure work together?
At their core, infrastructure components include networks, servers, data storage, firewalls, hardware components, software applications, and connectivity. Each serves a specific function, forming an integrated and operational system. The components are composed of interdependent elements that depend on each other to keep your business running. The integration must ensure that all aspects of a business’s infrastructure work harmoniously to support its operations.
How does IT infrastructure support innovation?
Legacy technology, obsolete processes, and fragile workflows do not bring organizations to their desired future state. By leveraging the right IT infrastructure components, businesses can achieve greater efficiency, scalability, security, up-time, and flexibility.
The overwhelming shift to digital business has forced infrastructure and operations (I&O) teams to accelerate the delivery of scalable and agile systems to enable digital business transformation. Here are three areas in infrastructure that can drive innovation now and in the future:
Sustainability
Organizations are reaching sustainability and carbon footprint goals by migrating infrastructure to the Cloud and using advanced grid management software.
Velocity
Infrastructure teams prioritize high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) to guarantee the optimal delivery of computing infrastructure.
Security
I&O teams employ cryptographic signing techniques to safeguard firmware, hypervisors, and operating systems.
When should I upgrade my IT infrastructure?
Your organization’s productivity, communications, and security are tied directly to one thing: your infrastructure. This ecosystem of technology components—hardware, software, and networking—must work together efficiently at maximum capacity. Legacy systems will face compatibility issues when integrating with newer technologies, eventually leading to data inconsistencies, operational inefficiencies, unplanned downtime, and security vulnerabilities. If your legacy systems cannot integrate seamlessly with your evolving infrastructure, it’s a sign that modernization is required.
How to start modernizing IT infrastructure for the future
Choosing the right partner for your IT infrastructure is crucial. CBTS employs experts who can assist in evaluating your existing IT environment and then developing and executing a strategy aligned to your business objectives. Typically the deployment of IT is HYBRID. There will be some degree of premises-based IT alongside workloads deployed across multiple clouds.
You may have the resources to manage your hybrid IT estate in-house or you may want to leverage a managed service provider like CBTS to provide comprehensive information technology support, including proactive monitoring, maintenance, and timely upgrades. Doing so lets you focus on your core operations and ensure that experts manage the IT systems. CBTS can deliver tailored solutions that surpass traditional in-house capabilities by understanding your specific infrastructure management requirements.
