As businesses mature, their requirements evolve to ensure sustainable growth and ongoing competitive edge. Those organisations that can predict the direction in which their industry and customer demands are heading, and make thorough plans accordingly, will succeed in the future.
However, planning for changes, especially in today’s volatile market, can be quite a challenge. Many decision makers are now racking their brains, trying to align long-term business strategies with digital transformation initiatives, whilst dealing with the near-term external shocks. Questions will undoubtedly arise on how best to align business planning with the ongoing technology roadmap to ensure the best possible operational efficiency, market growth, and the smooth running of resilient IT infrastructures.
Utilise our handy three-step checklist below to ensure your technology and IT systems can help you withstand turbulent market disruptions and meet your long-term business needs.
#1 Align cloud connectivity requirements with changing workforce needs
The post-pandemic shift to more flexible working patterns has now solidified in many organisations. As such, businesses need to take more proactive measures to efficiently move, process, and manage ever-growing volumes of real-time data. And accelerating multi-cloud implementations will help.
Distributing workloads across multiple cloud environments will guarantee agility and operational and cross-departmental efficiency in the future, as over-reliance on legacy systems will only hold businesses back from reaching their potential. By partnering with the right data centre provider who can offer unrivalled connectivity to leading cloud providers, organisations can ensure greater bandwidth scalability and maximum uptime to allow for greater collaboration across business areas.
To capture all the advantages of a multi-cloud environment, organisations must ensure that deployment is appropriately managed. This necessitates the development of a consistent, uniform system to handle all applications and workflows in the clouds. When implementing multi-cloud strategies, leveraging the expertise of a trusted data centre partner will help streamline the process and offer you a peace of mind through direct, private, and secure connections.
#2 Invest in the right technologies to meet sustainability targets
According to our new Climate Crunch report, over a third of organisations haven’t yet made any progress on their sustainability goals or haven’t even defined them in order to meet 2030 and 2050 climate targets/s.
Whilst it might be tempting to put sustainability on the backburner given the ongoing supply chain disruptions, inflationary pressures, and record-breaking energy prices, businesses cannot postpone their green progress for much longer. Customers are increasingly demanding evidence of corporate sustainability and wishing to do business only with organisations that can prove their commitment to combating the climate crisis. As such, the sustainability element needs to be incorporated into short-term and long-term plans.
Aligning with digital transformation strategies, IT decision-makers should look at how their technology investments are going to help them achieve better energy efficiency. Technology like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and innovative cooling systems, have proven incredibly useful in that area, especially in data centre facilities.
On top of that, businesses need to evaluate whether they have the right solutions to enable data-driven decision-making, including monitoring and reporting on Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions. Whilst Scope 3 emissions remain voluntary to measure, getting ahead of your competitors now will help you reduce costs and unlock new market opportunities with eco-savvy consumers.
#3 Overcome growth barriers with outsourcing
Business plans might prove challenging to realise with no end to the ITshortage in sight. However, looking towards new solutions to transform and future-proof IT infrastructures can help progress digitalisation strategies.
Businesses that are still relying on on-premise IT systems will continue to require a wealth of expertise in power and environmental controls, alongside mounting responsibility for ongoing asset maintenance. Outsourcing their IT infrastructure to a colocation data centre service provider and leaning on their extensive knowledge and experience will not only help fill in-house skills gaps but also guarantee much higher levels of resilience. In turn, organisations will be able to drive their growth and digitalisation initiatives forward and overcome a multitude of short-term and long-term challenges.
If you want to find out more top tips from industry experts on how to implement stronger, more resilient, and more sustainable planning for the years ahead, download our latest “Shape Your Tomorrow: Navigating Your Technology Infrastructure in 2023 and Beyond” e-book.