What Should Be Known About IT Infrastructure?

By Zippia, 87% of top managers worldwide consider digitalization a priority within companies they work on development strategies. Nay, under Forbes, nearly 89% of enterprises across the world have already implemented digital solutions to improve their workflow efficiency and corporate income.

Business digitalizing requires the arranging of high-quality IT infrastructure. Therefore, business owners worldwide strive to know more about IT infrastructure and its components. Otherwise, it would be quite hard for them to choose the proper equipment to create effective digital systems. So, let’s dive deeper into this topic.

What Is IT Infrastructure in Simple Terms?

Some information about this topic may be found in thematic blogs (e.g., on the is*hosting official website). But simply put, company IT infrastructure is a digital system that automates key business processes. For example, such technologies assist in simplifying the following things:

• interaction of consumers and managers or ordinary workers;
• streamlining logistic processes;
• accounting for completed orders;
• customer support optimization.

Thus, proper digitalization actually determines company possibilities. And this affects the competitiveness of an enterprise.

What are the Main IT Infrastructure Components?

Such an ecosystem consists of different devices, various software solutions, and network connections. Experts put these system parts into the next three key groups:

1.  Hardware – is the backbone of the specified ecosystems. This includes the physical components that help organize the system. For example, IT infrastructure hardware may involve laptops and desktops, mobile devices (tablets, smartphones, etc.), as well as servers together with data centers.
2. Software – this includes various programs and applications that businesses employ to manage internal processes, deliver services, and more. The specified group, for instance, involves web servers, operating systems, as well as anti-virus software. Nay, this bunch includes specialized apps for direct interaction with customers, monitoring the work of staff, etc.
3. Networks – the components of this group allow combining separate devices into a single ecosystem and connecting them to the internet. This includes routers, switches, firewalls, etc.

All the mentioned components are operated by corresponding specialists. Here, it’s worth noting developers, administrators, designers, etc. So, a digital ecosystem isn’t solely about IT infrastructure hardware and software but also live employees. Moreover, it is essential to choose experienced workers to maintain all system processes. Otherwise, ecosystems won’t be effective enough.

Primary Types of IT Infrastructure

Specialists note three kinds of the mentioned ecosystems. Thus, it’s not only about building such digital systems based on physical equipment. Entrepreneurs also can use virtual facilities to create IT infrastructure. So, business holders may build a digital ecosystem by applying equipment placed (fully or partly) outside corporate areas.

Traditional IT Infrastructure

The specified digital ecosystem type implies using physical equipment. This kind of system requires the following things:

• necessary devices and connectors;
• separate IT department to maintain the equipment as well as update software;
• areas to place all necessary devices.

Experts consider this IT infrastructure type the safest. That’s because corporate data don’t go through third-party organizations here. And this significantly reduces the risk of private information leakage.

Cloud IT Infrastructure

The mentioned kind of digital systems is quite popular nowadays. That’s because entrepreneurs should purchase much less equipment in this case. Instead, they rent the necessary amount of сloud storage space. The main pros of this IT infrastructure type are:

• no need to spend funds on handling equipment and software;
• fast scaling capability;
• no need to take care of data security (the provider is concerned about protecting information).

However, cloud infrastructure doesn’t enable making hefty system changes. But entrepreneurs can buy VPS to get such an opportunity. Virtual private servers allow, e.g., root access. That enables users to install necessary operating systems or any other software they want.

Hybrid IT Infrastructure

Some business owners use both physical devices and virtual facilities. This allows, for example, combining high-security levels along with wide scaling possibilities. However, in this case, entrepreneurs have to pay their own development team and additionally settle for cloud storage services.

Primary Infrastructure Security Requirements

No digital ecosystem can be 100% secure. This is because hacking techniques and malware are constantly improving. The most common threats to IT infrastructure are:

1. Ransomware attacks – here, malware gets access to internal information and encrypts the accessed data. Then, such bots demand a ransom to decrypt the encrypted files. However, this software usually doesn’t give any guarantees of returning the information.
2. Phishing – here, hackers receive access to employees’ personal profiles and then also to corporate data.
3. DDoS attacks – in this case, intruders send numerous requests to servers. Consequently, digital systems start lagging or even stop operating. As a result, ordinary clients can’t access the necessary data.
4. Physical intrusion – implies theft or intentional damage to equipment.

It’s necessary to set up the firewall properly, monitor unused software, remove such apps in time, conduct regular checks for unwanted intrusions, perform systematic backups, etc., to avoid such problems. More detail about IT infrastructure protection may be found, e.g., on ishosting.com.