Digital Transformation for IT Departments: How You Can Streamline Your IT Operations

Digital transformation of IT involves people, business processes, and technologies. It appeals to all the people concerned in your organization to redefine IT services as a means to boost efficiency and manage expenses. With advanced technologies, businesses can streamline their operations, remodel the implementation of applications and other products, provide better service, and maintain stronger relationships with customers as a result.

Challenges IT Departments are Facing Today

1. Substantial and intangible investments to ensure high levels of efficiency

Digital transformation of the IT department includes a strategic and comprehensive update of hardware, software, systems, and methods to cope with both existing and future business problems to ensure better business viability. 

However, this is something more than just modernization to the latest IT infrastructure. Transformation of IT also includes intellectual investment in computing, storage, and networks to ensure scalability, as well as the right balance between expenses, efficiency, and performance.

2. Necessary reforming of business culture and organizational structure

Successful IT transformation guarantees better business flexibility, security, manageability, lower TCO, as well as a faster reaction to ecosystem changes. Yet, all this is not possible without the full immersion of your people into the new digital culture. Employees' enthusiasm about changes generates creative vitality and resources to make digital transformation dynamic and productive.

3. Capability to keep abreast of the times

Modern IT models, like cloud computing, make it possible for small businesses to keep up with large enterprises, and even outrace them sometimes. Along with that, businesses place a stake in advanced tools, such as AI and predictive analytics, to keep pace with market trends. 

Besides, companies should be flexible and fluent enough to react swiftly to global changes caused by, for instance, the COVID-19 pandemic. Effective IT transformation offers a great variety of smart and quick tools to guarantee business prosperity and agility.

4. Increasing pressure to produce

IT leaders and project management officers have always been under pressure to produce tools and solutions to deal with different business tasks. And that was before the mass migration to remote work! 

Today, IT teams have to manage a globally distributed workforce, introduce technologies that help teams to collaborate from anywhere at a high level. Now more than ever, aligning IT projects to the company strategy, as well as operating with swiftness on critical priorities are essential for success.

Advantages of IT Transformation

Every plan of IT digital transformation is unique, though basic advantages of the process are common for any business. Here they are:

- faster time to market and business prosperity guarantee

- easier manageability

- lower expenses and better cost management

- remedy of outdated infrastructure

- more effective risk management and higher stability

Streamlining IT Operations

Digital transformation of IT operations should be performed through a complex set of actions, with account taken of investments and elaborate strategy aimed at prediction and problem-solving. It includes studying operational cohesiveness among systems, networks, and workflow policy. Below are some of the priority areas covering various workloads to be streamlined.

1. Implementation of the hybrid multi-cloud approach – it combines the best of your cloud and public cloud resources. Personal clouds collect all your computing, storage, and network resources into a shared pool, which streamlines the distribution of operational tasks irrespective of the location. And, by adding public cloud services like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, or Google Cloud, you can expand your horizons a lot more. These additional resources help to control seasonal variations, comply with the requirements of working efficiency, and provide IT services faster.

2. Elimination of mismatching and network bottlenecks – it is performed with the help of performance optimization through updated components. For example, modernization to the latest scalable processors ensures higher computing performance. Adding solid-state drives that helps to maximize the performance and eliminate storage bottlenecks. Besides, simultaneous modernization of computing, storage, and network tools can guarantee IT efficiency throughout the entire infrastructure.

3. Shifting to enhanced analytics and AI – these tools are used to solve complex business tasks, actuate scientific research, predict events and customer's behavior, and control systems and operational lines. The basis for analytics is ensured through the acquisition of the most important data, mainly via virtualization and aggregation of storage levels to increase data accessibility for scientists and researchers. For example, visual processors provide data processing for computer vision in smart cameras, while FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays) can be used on accessories to support the deployment of 5G and IoT.

4. Deployment of multi-level data security – the higher the number of devices connected to the corporate network, the larger the area of cyber attacking. A multi-level approach to data security includes software security, like protection from malicious software, as well as hardware security, detection and restore tools, risk management policy, and respective personnel training.

5. Development of data-based thinking – to make digital transformation a reality, a company should incorporate its data architecture, operation model, compliance with the requirements, and security measures. A strong data strategy can help to clearly determine the vector of data orientation, and create "data as a service” to streamline the process of data acquisition by the employees. One of the main aspects here is to turn miscellaneous data puddles into data lakes, with reliable data accessible for all the business departments and processes. Teams can analyze and exchange data through APIs, AI, and machine learning tools, with risks of data leakage or loss at minimum levels.

How to Streamline IT Operations: Use Case

Seamless workflow integration of IT management tools is crucial for business profitability and resilience. By integrating vital IT management tools, such as endpoint management, service desk, and knowledge management systems, IT teams can easily reduce IT operating costs and ensure business growth. 

Let's look at one possible workflow integration to save time and efforts for IT teams.

Automated Service Ticket Creation from the Endpoint Management Solution

This endpoint management tool enables monitoring of events and conditions on each endpoint (via an installed agent) and then automatically responds to alerts that occur. The response can take several different forms, including:

- alarm generation,

- execution of a script on the endpoint,

- automated creation of a service ticket,

- sending of the respective email to the support staff.

In short, in some cases, the process of auto-remedy by executing a script on the endpoint may fail. Then, you will want the endpoint management tool to automatically generate a service ticket in the service desk tool, and to send an email to the support team to resolve the issue. 

Thanks to seamless workflows between endpoint management and service desk solutions, most incidents can be auto-remediated, which saves time for both IT experts and helpdesk staff, and drastically reduces MTTR (mean time to resolution).

Concluding Notes

Information technology has played a prominent role in reshaping businesses ever since the dawn of the digital revolution. Various IT tools have been used to tackle complex business problems, such as cybersecurity, system uptime, resource management, and regulatory compliance. However, if these tools function without the proper workflow level integration across products and services, businesses simply fail to achieve the desired level of operational efficiency.

Only a deep understanding of the entire IT ecosystem, from end devices to DPC, and the business management policy, ensure successful digital transformation for IT departments.