What Is IT Infrastructure Management? Meaning, Benefits and Best Practices

IT infrastructure management refers to the processes and practices for operating, administering and maintaining all technology components (networks, servers, etc.) in an organisation.

Many organisations do their IT infrastructure management internally through dedicated IT operations teams. Some common challenges they face include:

• Lack of skilled staff to manage complex infrastructure.

• Difficulty keeping pace with rapidly changing technologies.

• No standardised processes lead to inefficiencies.

• Insufficient tools and monitoring resulted in reactive maintenance.

For example, a healthcare provider may face security incidents due to limited expertise/tools to protect against ransomware. Without a robust cybersecurity protection suite, problems may go undetected until there is an outage.

How to overcome these IT infrastructure management challenges? There’s a solution for that. Organisations can outsource infrastructure management to managed service providers (MSPs) like Netcon. The MSP handles day-to-day infrastructure management - operations and maintenance - allowing the business to focus on core activities.

Partnering with Netcon, you get access to skilled specialists with expertise of 17+ years in managing complex infrastructures. We can also help with proactive monitoring, scalability strategies, network infrastructure, security compliance, and more.

Over the last 17 years, Netcon has worked with esteemed clients like Bangalore Airport, Mumbai Airport, Textbook Corporation, Sundaram Clayton and many more to help them with IT infrastructure and its management. For example, we automated an IoT-based irrigation system at the T2 terminal of Bangalore International Airport. It automatically manages to water the hanging bells and veil plans based on the soil moisture level.

In this article, we start with the foundation of IT infrastructure management. Then, wherever applicable, we share how Netcon can help you overcome challenges and support you in building a robust IT infrastructure.

Do you want to outsource IT infrastructure management and focus on your core business activities? You can book a consultation call here or drop us an email, and we’ll get back to you.

Basics of IT Infrastructure Management

Here, we’ll look into what makes up the IT infrastructure management and what role an IT head can play to efficiently manage infrastructure.

Components of IT Infrastructure

Most search results will tell you that there are 5 components of IT infrastructure. But in our experience, we can put everything under 2 broad categories: Hardware and software.

Hardware

It consists of all the physical components that make the IT infrastructure work:

• Computers (Also, laptops and printers)

• Storage devices

• Network components

• Servers

• Data centers

A general rule of hardware — the more advanced it is, the better speed and performance it’ll have.

Software

Software is a set of instructions or code that allows your hardware to communicate. Operating systems for computers, ERP and CRM software, and CMS software, all enable your hardware to do the tasks you want it to do. Management and monitoring tools for network, data centre, server performance, and so on are also software.

Most software is SaaS these days. But a few are installed on-site - SAP, Oracle, master data management software, backup and disaster recovery software, etc.

What Role Does the Head of IT Have?

The head of IT is responsible to stay on top of the technological developments in the concerned domains and map out the IT infrastructure roadmap for the next five years.

Let’s take an example of a manufacturing facility that functions 24*7. Advancements like enterprise 5G or digital twin software can be game-changers. Even 10-15% leaps that microchip and data centre technology makes every few years can be worth a significant upgrade.

The IT head should be on the lookout to check the feasibility and business impact of these emerging technologies, and see if he can implement them as soon as possible.

But their focus remains on the upkeep of already existing infrastructure challenges. The priority is to keep the lights on on their infrastructure for now. By doing this, they miss out on advancements that the industry is making and the impact that it can have on their business operations.

A good option to overcome this challenge is to partner with a managed service provider (MSP) like Netcon. By outsourcing your daily IT activities to Netcon, you can focus on your core business functions. We’ll help you manage the current infrastructure and guide you with emerging technologies and future-proofing plans.

How To Build a Robust IT Infrastructure Management Strategy?

Without clearly laid out processes, IT infrastructure management is chaotic. You only address the issues that come your way for the time being and forget them once they function the way they should. In this section, we’ll explore how you can fix that and become robust and organised.

Design a Scalable and Secure Network Architecture

How to do that? We suggest three steps:

1. Assess the current network architecture. You can do so by checking the modularity of components.. See if they’re scalable enough to meet your future needs.

2. Design a hierarchical architecture with redundancy and standardised components while following the basic network design principles that will help you build a solid network.

3. Follow the best security practices for networks like access controls, internal network segmentation, and end-point security. Security is non-negotiable.

It can seem overwhelming, but Netcon can help you achieve a robust network architecture. We’ve deep industry expertise working with all the leading network Original Equipment Manufacturer(OEMs) for the last 16 years. We know them inside out, and we can make different ecosystems work seamlessly.

Okay, you’ve achieved your goal of a scalable and secure network. Now, let’s move on to data.

Have a Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan

It’s obvious why one should have a data backup and recovery plan. When an incident strikes or storage is corrupt, backup and recovery strategies ensure business continuity.

Data backup

Having copies of all your important data, stored either onsite or offsite in a storage facility, is called backup. If your current storage facility goes boom because of malware, backup can help you keep your operations going.

Here are some ways we suggest you can have a good backup process. Keep in mind to have regular and scheduled backup cycles for all your devices - wired, wireless and remote. Automate these processes to avoid the headaches of manual backups.

The best practice for a reliable and foolproof backup plan is the 3-2-1 rule. Create three copies of data, backup at two different locations, and one of them should be offsite. We did the same for Cochin International Airport, an 80TB on-site backup and a 50TB offsite backup on AWS.

Disaster recovery plan

When an incident strikes and halts all your operations, a disaster recovery plan provides a clear, step-by-step plan of action to counter the attack or outage.

For example, here’s a nifty plan we suggest you can follow:

Assess and identify: Determine what data is compromised and the severity of the loss.

Isolate affected systems: Disconnect or shutdown affected servers/devices to prevent further spread.

Restore from backups: Locate most recent clean backups of critical data and systems. Initialize restoration to alternate hardware if necessary.

Failover to alternatives: Shift remaining operations to alternate/cloud-based servers if possible.

Rebuild and fortify: Acquire new infrastructure as needed to replace affected systems. Review policies and add extra redundancy to prevent future failures.

That way, you'll have minimal downtime. You can have all your systems and the business functioning up and running without a significant economic hit.

Ensure Compliance With Regulatory Standards

For every industry, there are set security standards like Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard or PCI DSS for the online card payments industry, and more that IT infrastructure needs to meet.

Then, there are laws to govern data privacy. GDPR for Europe and CCPA for California lay out the rules around data privacy, encryption, access management, breach procedures, and so on.

Keeping up with these standards and implementing them effectively can be a challenge for the internal IT team, especially if they lack the expertise.

An MSP like Netcon can help you with guidance, policy and process development, continuous monitoring and optimisations, helping you achieve compliance with the regulatory standards.

Now that we’re well-versed in building a robust IT infrastructure, let us see how to manage it efficiently.

Tools and Technologies for IT Infrastructure Management

Having a solid IT infrastructure is one thing. Managing it and keeping it efficient is another thing. Here’s where management tools help you.

They give you visibility into your infrastructure. You can see data around vital metrics like the performance of your networks, bandwidth allocation, errors in the networks, server usage, and more. Here’s how they help you.

Automate for Efficiency

You can automate clearly defined, repetitive tasks to save time and resources. That’s IT infrastructure automation. These automation needs will depend on your business operations and applications.

You can automate tasks and basic processes around data centres, network management and resource allocation.

Let’s say you want to add and configure a new device to your network. The old way to set it up would be to configure it manually. But if you have Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP), it’ll automatically provision and configure new devices to the network without any manual intervention. As soon as the device powers on, mechanisms like DHCP and script execution automatically configure it with the appropriate settings.

This automation eliminates manual, error-prone setups, allows rapid scaling, and implements automated security controls.

Integrate Cloud Solutions With Your IT Infrastructure

While the cloud boasts its benefits of scalability, OPEX, flexibility and high performance, integrating it into your IT infrastructure is daunting.

There are several challenges - vendor lock-ins, cybersecurity concerns, complexity of integration, lack of expertise or experience in cloud environments, improper migration strategies, and so on.

A recent report by Gartner says that through 2025, 99% of the security failovers while moving to the cloud happen because of the leniency from the client’s end. Cloud providers are more secure than they’ve ever been.

To avoid that, you must have clear, detailed, and strict security policies while integrating or moving to the cloud.

An IT infrastructure management provider with relevant experience and expertise can help you with your cloud strategies. Netcon works with leading cloud service providers, and we ensure that you eliminate and manage unnecessary costs that the cloud is infamous for.

We’ve covered the importance of IT infrastructure management tools. We’ve also seen how an MSP can help you with cloud strategies. Next, the best practices.

Best Practices for IT Infrastructure Management

Learning from our experience as an MSP, we’ve compiled the must-do best practices to effectively manage your IT infrastructure,

Have a Comprehensive Disaster Recovery Plan

We discussed the importance of having a disaster recovery plan. Now, let’s look at how to create it for your business.

Start with business impact analysis. Identify critical business functions and list them according to their priority. Determine the maximum acceptable downtime and data loss that you can afford on your IT infrastructure. Map the data according to its sensitivity and priority. Next, analyse the dependencies.

Next, specify the recovery requirements - what all technology systems, hardware, software, networks, data, and user access will be needed to restore the business functions.

Now, define policies for declaring a disaster, ordering recovery, and specify roles and responsibilities. The more detailed the procedures, the better. You’ll uncover more and more scenarios where details matter as you test them thoroughly.

Lastly, train the staff for disaster. So, they’ll know and understand their roles to the T.

Optimise Performance via Capacity Planning

Modern storage, networks and computing power are dynamic. You can achieve more with them if you optimise them correctly. Based on the requirements of a particular task, you can allocate the resources and optimise the performance of your IT infrastructure.

At Netcon, we can accurately gauge the needs of different systems and applications and help you optimise your infrastructure.

With optimisations in place, we move on to the challenges of IT infrastructure management.

How To Overcome the Common Challenges

We have distilled the three most common challenges that most enterprises face while managing their IT infrastructure.

Security Concerns in a Connected Environment

A connected environment is complex, with different systems connected and interacting with each other. That increases the surface area and the risk of cyber crimes. We have created more doors and windows for the attackers.

DDoS attacks, malware, and ransomware are the most commonly plaguing cybersecurity risks enterprises face. During 2022, there were 5.5 billion malware attacks around the globe. And worm malware was blocked 205 million times. Mr Mahalingam, the MD of Netcon, marked ransomware as the biggest security threat for enterprises in 2024 on our podcast.

Here’s where the cybersecurity expertise of Netcon can secure your IT infrastructure. Spot, our homegrown MDR, can provide a robust defence against threats. Our 24*7 SOC and NOC teams analyse, report and eliminate any suspicious activity on your infrastructure to keep your operations safe from cyber attacks.

Downtime Risks and Service Disruptions

We build redundancy and high availability measures into the IT infrastructure while designing. We keep the tolerances tight. We follow the standardised policies and the best practices of managing the infrastructure.

Our team will proactively check if the backups are regular. And we’ll also check if the backup data matches the original data. If your backup is corrupt, the whole exercise will be worthless and futile. We’ll continuously evaluate and update the recovery plans and security policies.

Another aspect to minimise downtime and service disruptions is to check the health of infrastructure components. If they need an update or a refresh, we’ll do that to keep things running hiccup-free.

High Costs

Costs of just keeping the lights on of your IT infrastructure can skyrocket if not managed properly. Randomly adding servers and storage in an ad-hoc way, overprovisioning and underutilisation, cloud resource wastage, lack of planning, etc are some common factors that lead to increased costs over time.

An experienced managed service provider will help you with everything around your IT infrastructure - from designing to managing to maintaining to future-proofing. While doing so, it’ll help you save massively by optimising resources and managing costs.

Choosing Netcon as Your Go-to IT Infrastructure Partner

Two reasons help Netcon stand out from most managed service providers.

1. We are flexible thanks to our relatively smaller size. That means we can be agile and nimble with our approach and processes.

2. We focus on domain-specific issues.

We have been in the business for the last 17 years, with deep experience in IT infrastructure management and consulting.

We’ve successfully executed large-scale projects with high complexity and 50k+ endpoints. Bangalore International Airport and Mumbai International Airport are the best examples.

Netcon’s support is quick.. We proactively remediate errors that pop up on our NOC. You can reach our support team via helpdesk, email or chatbot. We acknowledge and start working on your issue within 15 minutes of reporting to resolve it as soon as possible.

Contact us today and see how we can be of help to you.