If you’re familiar with fast IT infrastructure, any performance issues are probably noticeable to you. For people used to slow IT, it might not be as noticeable. Unfortunately, slow IT is ignored as something that happens, but it doesn’t have to be that way. You can make small changes to your IT to speed up performance. Faster performance means more productivity, fewer mistakes, and more manageable applications.

Cost is the Primary Reason to Avoid Upgrades

The primary reason for disregarding slow network performance is money. IT infrastructure costs money, especially when shortages in specific hardware occur. Memory shortage makes the cost of computer and network equipment skyrocket. Having hardware on-premises is generally expensive, but you don’t need to host it in-house.

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Cloud computing cuts the high costs of having IT infrastructure hosted in-house. You pay for the equipment that you use rather than buy the hardware outright. For example, a new server could cost thousands in hardware, but it might only cost a few hundred dollars a month if you spin up a virtual machine in the cloud. The cost of the hardware isn’t the only expense, so a few hundred dollars a month for a virtual machine is much more affordable than hosting the hardware, finding the real estate, and keeping staff to support it.

Finding Staff Can Be Difficult and High Cost

When you have a very small office with just the owner and a couple staff members, you can host your own hardware without the need of any support. As you grow, you will come across issues where you can’t figure out how to properly configure hardware or remediate a technical error. You need IT support staff to help.

IT staff are expensive, so many businesses avoid upgrading to high-performance equipment to stick with the infrastructure that they are already familiar with. You need IT staff to manage more advanced infrastructure, and more than one staff member is often needed if your business grows. The cost of staff and the requirement to build a new department for IT often makes business owners apprehensive about upgrading their IT infrastructure. At some point, businesses need someone to manage their IT and support user questions, which is an expensive addition to their corporate budgets.

Inexperienced Businesses Might Think Slow is Normal

Not everyone knows what 50Gbps internet access feels like, so a slower network environment might seem normal to some businesses. The cost to upgrade to a faster internet plan is often negligible, but the cost to upgrade network hardware can be expensive. As people continue to work with the slower infrastructure, it becomes the norm and employees think that slow performance is not an issue. The fact is that these slowness issues can interfere with productivity.

Harm from performance issues is one of those hidden productivity hindrances. For example, suppose that you have slow applications from older network hardware. Your customer service people take more time to look up customer issues and research into their problems. The performance issues with your network environment could be reducing the number of customers an employee can manage during their daily activities. The longer it takes to handle a customer issue, the angrier customers can get. The domino effect from slow network performance can be hidden as other issues.

Apprehension with New Technology

If you haven’t worked with new technology or migrated to the cloud, you might be apprehensive to make changes without knowing if you will struggle to work with your new infrastructure. Many people keep their original hardware and software to avoid disruption from changes. Employees need training to learn new technology, and this can seem like too much of a burden for small businesses. It’s especially difficult when small businesses are extremely busy and employees are already overworked.

Most small businesses stick with what they already know, but new technology can speed up productivity, make it easier for employees to handle their daily activities, and help with business continuity. For example, data backups and disaster recovery will keep the business running even after a natural disaster or cyber-incident.

Choosing New Infrastructure Requires a Professional

If you don’t know how to fix performance issues, you probably don’t know what hardware and software to buy. Even if you decide to work with cloud computing, you still need to know what to deploy. Deploying new resources for your business requires a professional, either as a full-time employee or a consultant to give you guidance. You might even need onsite support from IT consultants if you don’t have the onsite stuff to help deploy the right infrastructure.

Poor performance often requires scaling resources horizontally, meaning that you need more servers and hardware to support your business. Professionals will ensure that these resources can be scaled with your business. You shouldn’t need to continually upgrade your infrastructure after a short amount of time. Instead, your infrastructure should scale dynamically, which is one of the benefits of using the cloud.

Delaying Change

The need for infrastructure is often put off for another day. Small businesses have several expenses to think of as their business grows, so IT is often put on the back burner. This can be a mistake when infrastructure gets so out-of-date that it poses productivity limitations and keeps the business from growing. You don’t want your infrastructure to be the cause of your business being unable to grow, so it’s time to build a plan and deploy upgrades.

Instead of delaying your business growth from your infrastructure, you can engage with professionals that can help you build an IT roadmap, plan out your infrastructure deployment, and maintain your IT so that it runs at peak performance. You also need professionals to monitor your environment to identify any ongoing issues and solve them before you suffer from downtime.

If you need help with an IT roadmap and know that your performance is hindering productivity, contact us today to find out how Corporate Technologies can help.

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