TECH TALK: BILL MAGEE says businesses can make great savings by upgrading their IT
A business that keeps antiquated technological systems on what’s been described as “life support” is costing between 60% and 80% of its entire IT budget. If that wasn’t enough, sky-high operational costs caused by such aged tech can drain an organisation by as much as £1,000. Every hour.
Such a negative commercial approach stifles innovation and growth for the organisation involved, along with threatening smooth delivery of products and services and attract new customers.
It’s true IT systems can be so ingrained in workflow processes and embedded in a company’s everyday culture that it makes change difficult to contemplate.
Yet bringing in a digital expert to sort things out can work wonders. Whether it’s a computer platform, software function or programming language holding the business back.
Or a combination of all three. Such outmoded applications cannot be relied upon in such a fast-changing digital landscape.
At stake is sensitive information of a business and its clients, with vital data exposed to all sorts of vulnerabilities, as well as falling foul of regulatory compliance that can bring about legal and financial repercussions.
There still exist significant numbers of stubborn businesses relying on such old systems that lack properly designed firewalls and encryption protocols, leaving them wide open to cybercriminals.
The organisation will likely suffer from slower processing speeds and endless glitches leading to an erosion in productivity plus rising energy and other utility bills.
Forbes Technology Council reports that as a business grows and evolves it’s highly likely the IT powering it will become obsolete or no longer sufficient for its needs.
The challenge is knowing when is the moment to change and make upgrades to enhance and at the same time simplify matters for employees.
The trick is realising that a modernisation initiative has to happen before there is a significant breakdown and/or security issue.
It requires careful planning to minimise, as far as possible, productivity disruptions.
Another key tickbox is to develop a process whereby an organisation gains more of an understanding of the likely lifespan of its legacy tech.
If it cannot be fully operated it’s time to ditch it. Plain and simple.
Other tips include conducting a tech audit with an eye on clearly-defined business outcomes, prioritise cyber risk, take a data-driven approach, involve end-users, also prioritise Cloud-native infrastructures.
With all of this in mind, I make no excuse for repeating the warning made last year that across industry enterprises waste around £1,000 hourly, caused by high operational costs of largely unused computing times and old tech.
In today’s highly competitive digital marketplace an ambitious organisation must seek new ways to optimise operations, enhance the user experience while reducing costs.
One solution is serverless architecture and associated technology. But apparently it is regularly misunderstood. The answer is to implement a Serverless Adoption Framework (SAF).
Cloud computing removes server management responsibility away from developers, enabling them to write code for all sorts of functions including HTTP requests, database changes and scheduled tasks.
SAF leads to a previously unthought of scalability and flexibility plus the potential to significantly reduce development and maintenance costs to transform a business.
Cloud providers like AWS Lambda, Azure Functions and Google Cloud Functions automatically manage the required infrastructure, scaling and maintenance of the required functions.
The amount of cash a business can save depends on size and complexity of applications, level of traffic they receive and how efficiently resources are optimised.
Final takeaway? It isn’t just about reducing operational expenses but also unlocking a more efficient and responsive way of building and running those applications to ultimately enhance an organisation’s products and services.
So for the hard-pressed executive, just stop and think about all of this for a minute. Not too much longer though, in case you find a grand has quickly left your digital wallet.
This column is supported by digital transformation specialist Exception UK
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