ICT Infrastructure Management

ICT Infrastructure Management, Process and Risk

1. Design and Planning

Information and communication technology (ICT) management is designed using proven, repeatable processes to provide a stable operating environment for your business. Which technology to adopt and maintain and which platforms to decommission? Every product has a lifecycle: research, selection, introduction, maintenance, and sunsetting. Following these ICT Infrastructure Management processes will help to determine the best path for your business.

Using ITIL aligned processes is helpful in deciding which is the best route for your organisation.

For example, the IT team may decide to discontinue support for a legacy system such as a file server which is planned to migrate to the cloud. Once the migration is complete the team would sunset server and give everyone a specific date to switch to the cloud service replacement. It is vital for the the team to use well established ICT deployment processes to make sure that the services are available on time and as communicated to avoid disruption.

2. ICT Deployment Management and Risk

Making any changes to hardware or software can introduce significant risks to your operations if not managed correctly. Correct ICT deployment management processes are designed and tested to ensure that hardware and software changes have the least possible impact.

ICT deployment processes control the introduction of hardware and software changes into your operating environment. These processes guide and manage the deployment activities in both production and test environments to minimise the impact of changes be they large or small.

Using a monitoring solution will enable your IT team to closely monitor and control the impact of changes throughout the project. It will also help to ensure that the SLA’s for service availability are upheld during the change management process. Monitoring and process management helps your IT team to detect performance problems and fix them before they impact any systems or customers.

3. ICT Operation Management

Monitoring and maintaining ICT Operations is a complex task for any business so it is imperative that you deploy strict operations management processes otherwise you will inevitably introduce unknown and unseen risks.

Best practice is to adopt ICT operations management processes for vital and scheduled tasks such as like Windows patching, end point protection updates, data management, backup and recovery and database administration. Additionally by using capacity planning tools your IT team will be able to perform health checks across  your applications and infrastructure regardless of whether it is in office or remote. 

4. ICT Technical Support

Comprehensive documentation and technical support is crucial to the successful management of your ICT operations which is often overlooked post implementation. Support teams must be properly briefed have access to the documentation and be trained on new deployments as they will be the ones responding to and managing any tickets raised after implementation.

• IT services are the front line in managing all of your infrastructure and services 
• Provide up to Level 3 problem management
• Technical evaluations of ICT design and planning. 
• This could include proof of concept (POC) for new systems or the management of RFI and request for proposal RFP.
• They act as a liaison with vendors on technical matters and they also create and maintain the technical library and technical knowledge base for your organisation.

If you need help or advice related to this topic please get in touch with us here