No matter how solid your IT strategy, how meticulously you manage your networking resources or how proactive you might be in addressing issues, system failures happen.
What separates the men from the boys isn’t so much an organisation’s ability to prevent system failures from presenting, but their ability to quickly identify and rectify the source of the problem before it escalates and has the chance to impact productivity.
One of the principal challenges in maintaining IT infrastructure is trying to predict what might fail – and when. System failures can occur from a number of different causes, from mismanaged hardware and software to inadequately trained users.
Some reasons for system failures:
Poor development practices
Like insufficient testing and inadequate QA policies, are one of the main culprits of software-based system failures. To avoid this, make sure that testing and QA policies are rigorously adhered to, especially for systems already in operation.
Overloaded systems
It may sound like a no-brainer, but putting too much strain on your systems significantly increases the chance of system failure. If your systems are too overloaded to handle user demand, you need to increase capacity and eliminate bottlenecks wherever possible.
Inadequate user training
Failing to train the members of your team on how to use your systems and software correctly can introduce a lot of unnecessary risk into your processes.
At best, inadequately trained users will be less efficient and cause productivity to drop across the organisation. At worst, they could lose critical data; expose sensitive business information and cause system crashes or failures.
To avoid this, make sure comprehensive training is built into your on-boarding process for new employees and that existing employees have the opportunity to attend regular refresher courses.
Legacy hardware and software
Regardless of whether you’re using the latest and most powerful software available, your systems won’t be able to keep pace if you’re using outdated hardware. This could result in processes taking longer to complete, software freezes or lockups, and, ultimately, full system failures.
The same applies for outdated software: even with the most cutting-edge hardware systems, you’re setting yourself up for failure if you aren’t using the latest version of your core systems.
Misalignment between organisation, processes and system
The most important feature of any IT solution is that it should support your business and its systems, and make processes more efficient and easier to manage. IT solutions that are poorly aligned to the businesses they support add unnecessary complexity to business systems and increase the chance of system failures significantly.
Tech Precisions Managed solution ensures reliability and stability of your IT assets
Tech Precision service combines standard and preventative maintenance with robust, real-time monitoring of critical network and desktop devices, as well as industry-leading antivirus and anti-malware tools.
This results in an all-encompassing view of your network environment and its components, which enables us to prevent system failures from occurring. In the event of an unavoidable failure, you’ll at least have some advance warning of where and when it will arise.
Combined with our team’s prompt response time, you can rest assured that any issues are addressed and resolved before they impact your organisation’s productivity.
To find out more about how Tech Precision services can ensure that your system is as safe as possible from failure, take our free IT health check today (we will also include a quick educational document for your staff to improve cybersecurity awareness).