Top Trends You Need to Know for Large-Scale IT Operations

The Top Tips You Need for Large-Scale IT Operations

Supporting a large number of staff members can become an increasing drain on IT resources. See how outsourcing your support can help improve uptime and enhance productivity.  

Supporting large-scale IT operations of over 100 computers is dramatically different than providing oversight to a group of 50-75. The added complexity involved in keeping everything running smoothly, deploying patches and upgrades, ensuring that users are fully trained on the latest cybersecurity procedures — each of these steps requires time and effort that it can be difficult to source internally. Organizations of this size may not quite be able to afford the overhead associated with multiple internal IT staff members, yet the needs of the business users are similar to those of an enterprise and far beyond what can be supported by only a few individuals. Many Canadian businesses in this range are seeing the value of working with outsourced IT services providers to help bridge the gap between the needs of the business and the support that can be provided internally. Here’s what you need to know to keep your large-scale IT operations humming smoothly along.

Supporting Needs of Mobile Workers

Business users today have more complicated lives, splitting time between home and office and working on a range of different devices and schedules. Finding the right support model for your highly mobile workforce starts with having help desk availability when you need it even if that happens after hours or over the weekend. Having remote support available is one way that IT managed services help support larger businesses as they grow and evolve. This could include everything from handling mobile printing solutions to mobile device management, remote access to business systems, advanced telephony solutions and more. Working with a managed services team allows you to gain the benefit of the enterprise-scale software solutions that you need without requiring the fine-tuning and implementation time of purchasing the software yourself.

Maintaining a Secure Infrastructure

Protecting your business may start with your physical building, but security today goes much deeper and requires a highly specialized and technical skillset. Protecting Canadian businesses from threat actors is becoming more difficult by the day, as cybersecurity experts are in high demand and low supply. While the federal government is launching training programs to help SMBs build the internal skillsets that they need, this work takes time — and hackers don’t wait until your defenses are in place before they attack. Organizations under 499 employees account for up to 70% of data breaches, according to Public Safety Canada, making organizations with 100 or more computers prime targets for these malicious individuals.

Defining Strategic Technology Recommendations

Changing business models are the norm for larger businesses as they attempt to keep pace with the competition and starve out smaller start-ups. A recent Gartner study shows that Canadian CIOs are tightly involved with shifting business models — more than half note that their top priorities for 2019 include operational excellence and digital initiatives. What happens when your organization doesn’t have someone in that top tech spot in the business? Decision-making may suffer and your business change models may flounder, simply because you don’t have a knowledgeable advocate for IT at the highest levels of the organization. Pre-enterprises often partner with IT services consultants who act in the role of a vCIO, or virtual CIO for the organization. The business gains the history, experience and insight of a high-level technology executive without the heavy overhead that may not be sustainable for the business.

Coordinating large-scale technology operations for your business starts with having a trusted partner who will work closely with you to define your needs and support your execution. At Fuelled Networks, our support team is extremely responsive and offers you the convenient service that your business requires. When you have a significant number of computers and staff members to support, it’s crucial that your IT services partner is up for the task. Contact the team at Fuelled Networks today at 613-828-1280 or fill out our quick online form for more information.