Business is looking
always for a robust IT environment with the lowest down time, building
unbreakable IT environment is a mission for IT department, and the functional
or business department should support the IT to build this environment.
Key of success for
any organization is a strong work environment, metrics to measure strong work
environment depends on business needs which means the strongest work environment
must be compatible with business needs, IT department should analyze the
business needs to know if it doable or not, and discuss the result with
business departments.
IT department
should document all business requirements and the analysis results and sign it
from authorized person or group from business side.
Unbreakable IT
environment is one of the things that will keep the functional and business
departments satisfied, and will decrease down time and cost. IT people should focus
on service not on technology to give the business what they expect.
Weak IT environment
in some businesses will cost the business extra money, reputation will be
negatively affected, decrease customer satisfaction, and maybe pay to the government
penalties.
The business should
support the IT people to build a strong work environment by giving them the
authority, budget and human resources as needed.
To build your
unbreakable IT environment there are many technologies you can use like (cloud,
virtualization, mirroring ...etc). You can use your facilities or you do it
with outsourced company.
Good understanding
of the company’s business and business needs it’s a mission for IT people, this
mission will give the IT better chance to build unbreakable IT environment.
My advice to build
your unbreakable IT environments is:
1- Collect the business
needs and do the business impact analysis to categories the business processes
that depend on IT environment.
2- Analyze the
requirements to determine if they are applicable or not.
3- Be honest with your
business people by reporting them the result of your analysis, and say “No” when
it’s needed.
4- Choosing a good
technology depends on the budget, business needs and analysis results.
5- Don’t try to give the
business extra features it is a “Gold Plating”.