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Articles on this page are written by SYSTECH’s staff to share technology information and offer topics for your ideas and comments in Systech’s Technology Forum 

Infrastructure Optimization

More than likely you have become familiar with this term during the last couple of years.  Maybe one of Systech’s tech specialists mentioned it to you and possibly spoke to you at length about what it involves, and how it can benefit the functionality, operation and management of your business network.  You may have read about in some of the IT industry publications your technology staff subscribes to and passes around.  Infrastructure optimization has evolved as a readily understood phrase to identify what probably is the best upgrade for improving your business network and controlling the costs associated with your business technology. 

Let’s take a look at the phrase a little closer and get the definition and the concept clear in our mind.  For reasons I can’t explain, I still remember to this day the grade school vocabulary lesson where I learned the meaning of “optimum.”  Our teacher made sure we first understood the definitions of “minimum” and “maximum” and then identified optimum as a point between min and max where everything was “just right.”  It was further explained as being a relative point that varied depending upon the situation or condition of what was being discussed.  For me what I took away from the lesson of the day was optimum referred to the best something could or should be.

So, to put optimum into the context of your business technology it refers to making certain your network design is just right for your business needs and is configured to be the best it can be.

“Infrastructure” as it relates to business technology is a term which, from my personal experience, has come into popular usage primarily in the last few years.  For a long time the components of business technology were referred to and divided into hardware and software.  In the early days of network servers and desktop PCs, we would say “if you can pick it up or kick it, it was hardware.” 

Today, infrastructure is used to identify all the components of your business network other than the particular application software you are using to run your business.   In common usage, one hears the term infrastructure used most often in the context of our roads, bridges and highways.  Staying with this analogy for a moment, one could compare our nation’s highway system (bridges, roads, access ramps, etc.) to the hardware of your network.  The road signs, speed limit signs and traffic signals can be compared to the operating systems on your network servers and desktop work stations.  The cars, trucks, buses, etc. on our highways, the sole purpose for our highway system, can be compared to the data your networks controls, routes and stores.  To finish our analogy, our highways infrastructure includes all roads, bridges and traffic control signs and, by the comparison we’ve been making, your network infrastructure includes all of your computer hardware, the routers and cables connecting them and the operating systems that control your networks data flow.

Taking our analogy full-circle, it can be easily seen our nation’s road system has been designed with the concept of “optimization” in mind.  It’s the reason you don’t have an eight-lane highway in front of your house and you don’t have a two-lane road where a super highway should be.  Our nation’s civil engineers have made certain, as much as possible, to design right-size roads for the anticipated traffic volume.

Now lets take a look at your business network and talk about how it has grown and expanded as your company itself has grown, prospered and expanded.  Unless you had the opportunity to recently optimize your business technology infrastructure or you’ve been fortunate enough to rebuild your entire network to meet your current and future needs, your network today is the result of frequent upgrades, additions, alterations and adjustments.  Many networks have evolved this way and as a result they include technology detours, bottlenecks and occasional dead ends, all of which contribute to a network operation often suffering from slowdown, shut down (crashes) and inefficiency.

You can rest assured, if your network has expanded in incremental steps, you are not alone.  The very realization that many business networks have grown up in this way brought the information technology industry to coin the “infrastructure optimization” phrase.

Systech Information Services, Inc., under the guidance of Jack Prager, is now entering its fifteenth year of operation.  If you think back to 1994 and look at how much business network technology has changed since then, you can appreciate the vast knowledge Systech has garnered and mastered regarding business networks and their design, installation and maintenance.  In fact, a few months ago, Systech was recognized by Microsoft as a Gold Certified Partner, the highest tier of technology partners by this leader of the information technology industry.

Systech recognizes “Infrastructure Optimization” as the most important step you can take to update your business network and assure yourself your business technology is designed and sized just right for your needs today, tomorrow and for the years ahead.  Systech further understands infrastructure optimization is a process involving detailed analysis of your business, learning your plans and goals and evaluating your network setup of today and working with you side-by-side to provide you with business technology that’s just right and the best it can be.

To this end lets take a look how Systech will proceed as we assist you in optimizing your network infrastructure:

1. We meet with you and your technical staff to discuss your business focus, your business operation and your plans for growth and expansion
2. We review your current network installation, number of network users, data processing volume and network security
3. We identify the strength and weaknesses of your current installation with an eye toward network efficiencies and data security 
4. We look at the overall process of your business network and evaluate your disaster recovery procedures in the event of network failure

This evaluation process will lead us to a jointly reached proposal of what additions, changes and adjustments are necessary to enable you to optimize your business technology and assure yourself it is designed and conceived to be just right for your current and future business operation.

The end result of this process is to increase your network productivity, lower your network management costs and increase your data and network security.  

Gunter Schaub
Systech Information Services, Inc.