5 Must Features of a New IT Infrastructure

As the role of IT in businesses is evolving, new challenges have arisen that require IT infrastructure to have certain basic features. In this article, we will discuss some of the important features that a new IT infrastructure must have to improve its capabilities.

1. Geographic Coverage and Diverse Communication Protocols: The new IT infrastructure must cover a wider geographical area and support a variety of access methods and diverse protocols for communication. It must include Local Area Networks (LANs), Wider Area Networks (WANs) and the Internet as integral parts of IT infrastructures of reasonably moderate-sized companies.
2. Global Operations and Communication Plan: The IT infrastructure must focus on global operations and resources, and be supported by a well-established communication plan. This plan must cover the whole gamut of users, in and outside the organization, and must have multi-level access controls and security features.
3. Technology Isolation and End User Flexibility: The new IT infrastructure must isolate the technology from the end-user environment, providing flexibility to change technology without the need to reorient the end-user environment. The end user need not know where and how information is stored and being made accessible, ensuring security.
4. Acceptance of Unstructured Data and Integration with Other Software Tools: The new IT infrastructure must have facilities to accept data in unstructured form. Outputs of electronic spreadsheets that are becoming so popular these days shall have to be acceptable for integration. Interface of data with other standard software tools shall become an absolute necessity, and facilities for data exchange shall be essential in the new IT infrastructure.
5. Quick Adaptability to Changes and Exception Reporting: Quick adaptability to changes in the operating environment shall be an important feature of new systems. The ability of the systems to cope up with changes in product lines, packing sizes/trading lets, clubbing of related products and services shall have to be very quick and quite natural to the systems. Similarly, systems shall accept a variety of combination of information needs, and external data shall flow in them. Exception reporting shall be a regular feature for the systems. Policy changes shall be easy to implement on new systems, and policy implications on various parameters of the business shall be easily traceable.

Conclusion of New IT Infrastructure Features

The above-mentioned features are essential for a new IT infrastructure to improve its capabilities and meet the challenges embedded in the new role for IT. Companies must focus on these features to ensure that their IT infrastructure is capable of handling the demands of a rapidly evolving digital environment.