IT instability and outages are no longer a concern. Every minute of downtime for a system costs
approximately $9,000.
Since the world is becoming increasingly digital, system failures have become a hazard to
reputation, which can
impact the price of shares, sales numbers, and the overall potential for growth.
These tragic events highlight the necessity for companies to consider IT resilience, or the
ability to handle
technological disruption. A company that is IT-resilient is known for its capacity to
quickly handle and
recover from interruptions while maintaining a reasonable quality of service even in the face of
failure or
downtime.
The majority of the time, the reason for an outage can be avoided by proactive monitoring and
control.
While we know that it requires a culture change to maintain and enhance the resilience of IT as a
top priority, we
advise businesses to adopt a holistic approach comprising five easy-to-integrate key strategies
that can affect both
business and IT results.
5 Strategies for Improving the Resilience of your IT System in your
Business
The complexity of IT processes and systems is increasing, and the number of outages is also
growing. These issues
have made businesses massively invest in making their IT systems more resilient. After working
with several
companies regarding their IT systems' resilience, we have a few methods that have been tested
over time and
discovered to work most effectively for the IT Resiliency Strategy.
-
Set up an atmosphere that can control demand-related
emergencies
Whether driven by external forces or internal ones, demand may go up without warning. For
instance, if you take
GameStop as an example of IT resilience, In 2021, the company's stock price soared, and
investors came in to claim
their shares. Unfortunately, this led to the resources being so limited that customers could
not
access their
accounts, leading to the site being shut down.
Automation is now a standard feature of current IT architecture; however, only a handful of
companies know its
significance in constructing it into an IT-resilient system. This is apparent in network
automation, which aids in a
streamlined merger and acquisition process and reduces manual effort and the chance of human
mistakes.
-
Add redundancy to the data centre
Another approach to developing an IT resilience strategy is to look for potential problems
that
could cause outages
and then employ redundancy as a countermeasure. Companies that protect themselves from the
possibility of hard disc
failure by mirroring discs or using failover clustering to guard against failure at the node
level are good examples
of this.
-
Distance-based clustering, as well as a code for
erasure
For an IT resilience plan to work, businesses must operate normally in the event of a
failure.
This can be achieved
in two ways:
- Distance clustering: The concept behind this method is to extend failover clusters by
placing cluster nodes in
a distant data center. So even if the data centre fails to failover, the applications
running on
the cluster are
automatically transferred to the facility located remotely.
- Erasure coding: This mode to boost IT resilience is based on stripping the data
across
multiple clouds or data
centers. It assists in ensuring that the sensitive data remains secure, so that when a
company
stores data on cloud
storage, the erasure coding portion of the IT resilience strategies is structuring the data
so
that no cloud
provider has a complete copy.
-
Live backup and recovery in real-time
Recovery and backup continue to be integral aspects of resilience in technology, particularly
in
an "always-on" IT
environment. Continuous backups usually work with changed block tracking, in which whenever
a
storage block is
altered or created, it is targeted to be backed up. This way, data is backed up regularly
instead of as a one-time
backup at non-peak times.
How can you Improve the Resilience of IT? Tips and Techniques
In the wake of data breaches and network outages, it is clear that the IT system has moved a
few
steps away from
finding the best way to improve IT resilience. However, while we've studied the three IT
resilience practises that
are best practices, implementing them within the company is an entirely different game.
At PerfectionGeeks, we are well-known for keeping "build IT resilience" as the primary goal
of
each data-heavy app we
develop, so if a product or business owner comes to us for assistance in creating a
resilient IT
ecosystem, here are
the suggestions we provide.
Concentrate on the highest probabilities first
Make a checklist of daily activities that could impact the most important applications. For
instance, what happens
after the SAN is not working or is in a state of non-recovery? What is the strategy for
regaining the lost fibre
connection?
The answers to these questions can bring process roadblocks to the surface and help
businesses
comprehend the
consequences of these events. In addition, it helps them establish a solid IT resilience
strategy.
Consider building IT resilience holistically
In assessing your IT system's resilience, you should focus not only on the IT resources or
digital channels for
customers but also on those that support business. For instance, the development team may
not be
able to work
without a plan for code repositories and digital workspace applications, contrary to when
integration with
Salesforce does not work. Likewise, the sales team cannot follow up on leads; they cannot
follow
up on leads they
receive.
Be aware of your IT environment and dependencies
To boost IT resilience, it is important to understand the dependencies around
application-to-application,
application-to-services, and application-to-infrastructure. Understanding the connections
between the upstream and
downstream requires fully comprehending and communicating the implications to stakeholders.
Although these are just surface-level guidelines, there are numerous small things that
companies
must take care of as
part of their regular activities to make their IT systems more robust. But, one important
thing
to be aware of is
that it will require an all-hands approach. Something only possible in a flat culture where
resources and data are
not separated.
At PerfectionGeeks, we collaborate with clients to create their IT resilience strategy; our
first
step is requesting
that clients be part of all teams and comprehend their personal IT dependencies. Only after
you
understand what
systems and tools are being used to support user journeys can you begin to build a resilient
system.
Get in touch with our IT specialists to
develop an effective
IT resilience plan.