Creating Net Present Value Through IT: Hardware Maintenance

Network maintenance is such a broad topic; it’s a lot like car maintenance. What’s the most important thing to focus on? Breaks, tires, fluids - hardware, spam filters, password management… The truth is it’s all important, great. But, like a car you have to prioritize what to work on first.

If I was asked what issues companies face the most with their IT, I would say one of them would be performance. Technology is supposed to enable us. When programs are crashing, emails act slow or software lags; we get calls very quickly and rightfully so. The answer to what would be going wrong varies but ensuring that your hardware is well maintained can prevent many of these performance concerns.

Whether you have a local environment (physical hardware, on-site) or a cloud one (servers hosted with, AWS, Azure, AbleIT ;) etc.) there is a need to ensure the proper amount of CPU, RAM, networking, etc is there. Simplistically put, hardware and software take power and data (resources) to operate and if you don’t have enough in the form of HDD, CPU, RAM, etc. you’ll likely run into to issues. By monitoring and adjusting your network demands and resources, you can preemptively fix many performance issues before they show. This will reduce the amount of calls you make to IT and reduce the cost of delayed work from lagging programs/equipment.  

A positive net present value is created through maintenance programs that correct issues before they slow your business down.