Case StudyIT Support and Management Helps Logistics Company Evolve Tech Roadmap and Streamline Global Operations

Customer: A premier third-party logistics company	Profile: The client provides creative supply chain solutions with an asset-lite transportation division, a top-tier asset-based dedicated fleet, and innovative omnichannel distribution and fulfillment services
Industry: Transportation
Services: IT Leadership, Workforce Productivity, Infrastructure Systems Management, Application Support, and Managed Cybersecurity

The logistics company used an in-house transportation management system (TMS) to run daily operations. However, this solution and others in its ecosystem were running across three different environments.

Learn how Synoptek’s suite of IT Support Services helped the client:

Optimize IT system performance and reliability
Enable high levels of customer service
Effectively run global operations

BlogImproving Infrastructure Performance with the Cloud

As businesses evolve, they acquire and accrue a melee of tools, software, and technologies. But despite being surrounded by an abundance of new systems, organizations struggle to drive infrastructure optimization. An outdated or legacy foundation can severely impact business efficiencies while also causing cost overruns and poor growth prospects.

Given the current pace of digital transformation, CIOs must strengthen their technology infrastructure and make it resilient and adaptable to modern trends. They must look at ways to boost infrastructure performance and drive value through technology investments.

Read further to learn how cloud technology can promote the effective use and maintenance of technology assets and enhance infrastructure performance for maximum ROI.

What Is Infrastructure Performance?

Infrastructure performance refers to how well an organization’s technology systems and resources, such as servers, networks, databases, and other components can deliver the required computing capabilities. It includes factors such as system responsiveness, speed, reliability, scalability, and overall functionality. Simply put, infrastructure performance is about how well an organization’s technology works to meet its computing needs.

The Challenges of Infrastructure Performance

The business environment is constantly evolving with new applications, tools, and technologies being regularly introduced. As organizations embrace these innovations, they often experience excessive downtime because of unstable technology infrastructure. So, why is the technology foundation of most businesses so unstable? Here are the top reasons:

Ad hoc technology decisions: Critical technology decisions that have been made by several decision-makers over time are usually ad-hoc in nature. Each department or business unit ends up implementing a bunch of siloed systems to meet their unique demands.
Improper due diligence: Many businesses fail at carrying out proper due diligence to find a configurable off-the-shelf software product. They build one in-house, but it often lacks the agility they need to stay competitive.
M&A complexity: Software systems that get inherited from mergers and acquisitions are either duplicated or stretched to encompass various avatars over time. This makes the underlying technology infrastructure extremely complex and confusing.
Legacy systems: Legacy systems that have been heavily customized pose a complexity barrier to a replacement. Since they are built on outdated, proprietary technologies, they carry high opportunity and maintenance costs.

Why Technology Rationalization is the Need of the Hour

Despite the massive degree of technology disruption, today’s organizations struggle with converting resources into actionable plans. This is because their technology infrastructure is holding them back – restricting them from driving efficiencies, cost savings, and organic growth. Such an unstable foundation is also looked down upon by the modern customer, who expects agility and innovation in products and services.

Technology rationalization is a great way to identify and assess the real value of technology assets (as opposed to their perceived value). It allows organizations to:

Capitalize on their technology investments and minimize infrastructure complexity.
Make the right technology decisions while streamlining the process of technology management.
Cost-effectively run the business and scale to meet increased demand without roadblocks.
Efficiently manage the technology portfolio in a manner that is predictive and value-based.
Boost operational capability and flexibility and keep pace with evolving market trends and customer demands.

How Does the Cloud Boost Infrastructure Performance?

The global cloud computing market is expected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2030. The technology enables organizations to keep their business and technology strategies aligned. The cloud also helps them with application modernization and getting rid of legacy systems that restrict them from efficiently and cost-effectively meeting their goals.

Technology rationalization leveraging the benefits of cloud platforms like Azure or AWS can help organizations meet their specific business needs while also enjoying higher levels of agility and resiliency. Using the cloud, businesses can:

Easily connect applications and data across different technologies and environments.
Accelerate time to insights while enjoying a better understanding of the business, customers, market, and competition.
Stay aligned with the technological landscape and carry out support and maintenance activities with ease.
Leverage modern, cutting-edge features that enable a competitive edge and expand their tech ecosystem to keep up with the times.
Minimize downtime and gain valuable time lost due to an unstable infrastructure.
Keep their technology infrastructure reliable with ongoing administration, 24/7 monitoring, and defined service level guarantees.
Effectively manage changes in their technology environment and ensure uninterrupted flow for their business operations.
Boost agility and stability in their enterprise environment and minimize service disruptions.

Drive Agility and Innovation with the Cloud

Technology investment decisions are never easy to make. Yet, as new tools get introduced into the ecosystem, they demand a foundation that is robust, resilient, and secure. Crafting a cloud-enabled technology rationalization strategy can enable businesses to harness real value from existing technology systems while also capitalizing on new platforms.

The cloud can allow for effective and economic management of technology resources, paving the way for improved operational efficiencies. It can enable organizations to fuel growth like never before. It can also open doors to new standards of profitability.

Irrespective of where you are in your rationalization journey, embrace the power of the cloud to boost infrastructure performance and drive business agility and innovation.

BlogIaaS vs. PaaS – Understanding the Difference and Making the Right Choice

As businesses become cloud-first, IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service) models have been experiencing immense popularity. Offering an array of application development, collaboration, and hosting capabilities, these models pave the way for high levels of flexibility, scalability, and security in the cloud.

But how does one decide which model to choose? How are IaaS and PaaS different? What factors should organizations keep in mind while making a choice?

While both models offer distinct advantages and are adopted by software development teams based on specific use cases and organizational requirements, read on to understand the many differences and make the right choice.

What Is IaaS?

IaaS, or Infrastructure as a Service, is a cloud computing model that delivers essential computing resources over the Internet. In an IaaS model, cloud service providers deliver essential computing infrastructure, including servers, storage, networking, and virtualization, as a service to organizations or end users.

With IaaS, businesses can access and consume these virtualized resources on demand, paying only for what they use. This eliminates investments in and maintenance of physical hardware or infrastructure. This allows companies to scale their IT infrastructure up or down as needed, based on fluctuating demands, without the need for significant upfront capital expenditures.

Examples of popular IaaS providers include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

What Is PaaS?

PaaS, or Platform as a Service, is a cloud computing model that provides a complete and all-encompassing environment for developers to build, deploy, and manage applications. By delivering necessary development tools, runtime environments, databases, middleware, and other services, PaaS supports developers at every step of the application lifecycle.

Since it eliminates the complexities of managing the underlying infrastructure, developers can focus on writing code and creating applications. All provisioning, scaling, and maintenance tasks of the underlying infrastructure are taken care of by the cloud provider.

Examples of popular PaaS providers include Microsoft Azure, Google App Engine, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, IBM Cloud Foundry, and Red Hat.

How Are IaaS and PaaS Different?

IaaS serves as a foundational building block for various cloud-based services and applications. It enables businesses to focus on their core competencies while leaving the burden of infrastructure management to the service provider.

PaaS plays a crucial role in enabling businesses to leverage the full potential of cloud computing for their application development needs. It empowers developers to focus on creating innovative applications without worrying about day-to-day infrastructure management.

Despite offering similar capabilities, IaaS and PaaS differ in several aspects. Let’s look at the top differences:

	IaaS	PaaS
Abstraction Level	IaaS offers a low level of abstraction, enabling users to have complete control over their infrastructure and software and tools associated with their business.	PaaS offers a slightly higher level of abstraction, enabling users to leverage infrastructure resources and development tools, runtime environments, databases, and middleware.
Application Development	With IaaS, developers manage the application’s runtime environment, databases, and middleware. Although they have greater flexibility and control over the software stack, they must handle administrative tasks related to the infrastructure.	PaaS simplifies application development by providing a complete development platform. Developers can focus solely on coding and building applications while the platform handles the underlying infrastructure and runtime environment.
Scalability	IaaS allows for easy scalability. However, developers need to implement auto-scaling mechanisms and manage the scaling process themselves.	PaaS platforms typically offer built-in auto-scaling features that automatically adjust resources based on application demand. This makes it easier for developers to scale applications without manual intervention.
Flexibility	IaaS provides greater flexibility in terms of configuring and customizing the infrastructure, making it suitable for applications with specific requirements and customizations.	PaaS offers less flexibility in terms of infrastructure customization, as it abstracts away much of the underlying complexity. While it streamlines development, it may not be the best fit for highly customized applications.
Maintenance	Organizations are responsible for managing the operating systems, application software, security updates, and other administrative tasks related to the infrastructure.	PaaS providers handle most of the infrastructure management and maintenance tasks.
Use Cases	IaaS is suitable for businesses requiring greater infrastructure control or having unique requirements that demand custom configurations.	PaaS is ideal for rapid application development. It is well-suited for startups, especially for projects that demand speed and scalability.
Benefits	IaaS offers the flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness needed to meet infrastructure requirements without the burden of managing physical hardware. It allows them to focus on business growth, drive agility, and ensure seamless scalability.	PaaS allows developers to focus on building cutting-edge products without worrying about provisioning the underlying infrastructure. It enables them to be more productive, accelerate application development, and reduce time-to-market.Make the Right Choice

The adoption of both IaaS and PaaS continues to grow as organizations seek to modernize their IT infrastructure, improve application development efficiency, and leverage the scalability and cost-effectiveness of cloud computing.

IaaS provides virtualized infrastructure resources, offering more control but requiring greater administrative involvement from the customer. On the other hand, PaaS abstracts away infrastructure complexities, providing a development platform that streamlines the development and deployment process.

The choice between IaaS and PaaS depends on the specific needs, development approach, and level of control desired by the business or team. It is also possible to adopt a hybrid approach and use a combination of both: IaaS for specific workloads or legacy applications that require customization and PaaS for rapid application development and deployment of new projects.

Contributor’s Bio

Darren White

Practice Director, Cloud Advancement

Darren White serves as the Practice Director, Cloud Advancement at Synoptek, bringing 25 years of professional experience to his role. At Synoptek, White is responsible for the growth and strategic direction of the company’s public cloud practices and oversees cloud-related development, cloud center of excellence, sales campaigns, solution offerings and cloud operations.

BlogYour Complete Guide to IT Infrastructure Management

For any organization today, the rapid pace of IT adoption creates unique and critical business challenges. Since any system that is implemented needs to be managed and monitored throughout its lifecycle, there is a pressing need for organizations to enable continuous management of the underlying IT infrastructure.

IT Infrastructure Management helps organizations strengthen their business technology infrastructure. Through the regular design and deployment of IT policies and processes, IT Infrastructure Management ensures the continuous administration of IT equipment, data, human resources, and external vendors needed to ensure that IT operations run smoothly and efficiently. Read on as we walk you through all the importance, benefits, challenges, and opportunities of effective IT Infrastructure Management.

Why IT Infrastructure Management is Important

The buzz around digital transformation has caused every organization, big and small, to invest in the latest technology innovations to drive their business towards success. While implementing technology is a big and critical step in any transformation journey, performance issues or system downtime can lead to a huge loss in productivity – and in turn, affect revenues. Companies that do not invest in infrastructure management tend to put their business reputation at risk while also being extremely vulnerable to security breaches.

If you want to achieve sustained returns from modern tech systems, you need to ensure they are effectively managed and monitored 24/7. This has brought IT Infrastructure Management into the spotlight, as it empowers organizations with the capabilities to monitor and support existing and new tech systems, applications, and infrastructure 24/7. The right approach to IT Infrastructure Management allows for the consistent and efficient management of the hardware, software, and other systems that are necessary for delivering IT services by service level agreements.

The Top Benefits of IT Infrastructure Management

Serving as the true backbone of any business, IT Infrastructure Management provides the structure and control for functions responsible for diverse technical operations across physical and virtual environments – including hardware, software, and networking. IT Infrastructure Management enables organizations to:

Operate existing and new technology systems in the most effective and efficient manner
Effectively manage the asset lifecycle, right from procurement to licensing, deployment, implementation, integration, support, and retirement
Avoid outages, minimize downtime, and ensure business productivity is consistent around the clock
Focus on strategic priorities to drive their business forward and not worry about the day-to-day management of complex IT systems that keep their business running
Monitor endpoints, devices, systems, and networks and proactively detect or prevent breaches, attacks, or hacking attempts
Carry out regular and periodic updates for all IT systems and tools and ensure they are updated with the latest hotfixes and patches
Get detailed insight into performance metrics of IT systems and take steps to improve availability and uptime
Ensure high levels of employee productivity, which eventually translates into better customer satisfaction

Common IT Infrastructure Management Hurdles

IT Infrastructure Management, although critical to the overall functioning and success of any business, is not without challenges. Let’s look at some common hurdles that organizations face:

1. Lack of the Right Tools

For enterprises not in the business of IT, choosing the right tools for 24/7 infra monitoring can be taxing. Since different types of IT systems need different kinds of monitoring and maintenance using various tools, the lack of the right tools can wreak havoc on the outcomes of IT Infrastructure Management.

2. Inadequate Budget

IT Infrastructure Management using on-premises tools and traditional approaches can be a costly affair, requiring organizations to make massive investments in purchasing tools, hiring resources, training and retaining them, and more. An inadequate budget often compels businesses to resort to using insecure tools to manage and monitor their critical IT systems – which puts the entire business at risk.

3. Limited Knowledge

Organizations that are too busy driving their business to success often lack the knowledge needed to operate and manage their technology systems. Since IT Infrastructure Management is a complex undertaking, limited know-how in strategy planning, monitoring, IT Service Management, cloud support, etc. can make day-to-day management a Herculean task.

Streamline Your IT Infrastructure Management

If you want to enable robust IT Infrastructure Management, you need to opt for Managed Infrastructure Services to overcome many challenges in scaling and managing information technology infrastructure while also reducing costs. A Managed Infrastructure Services Provider can deliver the perfect blend of speed, agility, and simplicity. Partnering with a Managed Infrastructure Services Provider can enable you to leverage end-to-end IT Support Services, so you can focus on driving your business to success – and not worry about managing complex IT systems or dealing with dozens of vendors. A partner will also help ensure that the overall IT Infrastructure Management is closely aligned with your corporate operations, strategies, and goals.

Offering multipurpose functionality to support homogeneous or heterogeneous business environments, Managed Infrastructure Services can enable effective tech lifecycle management, optimize capacity, troubleshoot systems, ensure security, and provide around-the-clock support, so you can keep your IT infrastructure up-to-date and aligned with the latest trends and business requirements.

Ready to get started? Contact us today to speak with a member of our team!

Reduce downtime and gain back valuable time that can be lost to unstable infrastructures with Synoptek

BlogMid-Market Benchmarking Study: How Pinnacle Software Product Companies Strengthen Their Tech Infrastructure

As customer expectations and operating environments continue to evolve and disrupt businesses, strengthening the underlying technology infrastructure has become imperative to the success of software product firms. Today, technology is not just a tool to improve efficiency, but a key lever to drive growth. However, despite realizing the importance of adopting and implementing modern technology, most software product organizations lack a well-defined, enterprise-wide technology strategy and end up making investments that do not share common goals.

A recent mid-market benchmarking study conducted by the Everest Group and Synoptek revealed the different strategies Pinnacle software product companies use to strengthen their tech infrastructure. Read on as we uncover the top ways in which you can make your technology strong enough to overcome challenges.

The Key Tech Adoption Challenges Faced by Software Product Companies

The survey evaluated how companies across different industries use technology to drive growth. While a few enterprises seem to have cracked the code to achieve superior business outcomes through advanced technology capabilities, many others lacked key enablers. Although software product companies surpass other industries when it comes to the overall outcomes achieved from IT transformation initiatives, when it comes to improving their competitive positioning and delivering a superior customer experience using technology, they face plenty of challenges. These include:

Internal talent scarcity makes it difficult to implement the right technology innovations or maximize value.
Organizational resistance to change- stemming from rigid hierarchies and traditional ways of working
A non-conducive funding model that is a result of poor communication and coordination between business and IT leaders
Lack of vision for the digital journey causes tech implementation to be carried out in an ad-hoc and reactive manner
Sheer lack of executive support as technology is still looked at as a cost center and not as a strategic differentiator that can drive growth

Best Practices For Strengthening Your Tech Infrastructure

As you navigate the process of strengthening your tech infrastructure, challenges such as persistent talent scarcity or inadequate internal resources that are needed to meet the skill requirements for technology transformation are sure to come your way. This may directly or indirectly impact the success of your technology transformation initiatives. With tech investments not yielding the desired returns, Pinnacle software product companies tend to embrace certain best practices to achieve desired outcomes and drive investments in a way that enables the greatest speed and impact. Let’s discuss the tactics that you must implement for success:

Have a Strong Technology Vision in Place: Technology adoption is not just about implementing a handful of systems. For tech investments to result in long-term success, you need a strong vision and a robust IT strategy. Begin your tech adoption journey by understanding your organization’s vision and build a tech adoption strategy that works hand-in-hand with your business strategy. Make sure to evaluate the digital readiness of your business and consequently plan for investments that will drive the most value.
Understand Your Organization’s Culture: A strong tech infrastructure is as much about technology as it is about the people using that technology. Therefore, it is important to recognize employee concerns and apprehensions regarding new ways of working and educate and train them accordingly. Set up resilient change management processes in place, so legacy system modernization and new technology adoption can all happen in a simplified and streamlined manner.
Ensure a Decent Budget: No technology implementation is possible without a decent budget. Therefore, before you decide on bringing about the latest innovations, make sure to assess your technology investment budget. If you lack in-house expertise, gauge the option of outsourcing. Look at options at how you can fund your technology investments by brainstorming with key stakeholders and choosing an implementation strategy that best fits the needs of your business. In addition, learn ways in which you can get more out of your tech investment within your budget.
Embrace the Right Tools: Another important aspect of the tech adoption journey is to embrace the right tools. Understanding and evaluating your legacy infrastructure can increase investment in tech endeavors and help you in implementing next-generation technologies such as AI, blockchain, and IoT that will go a long way in maturing your technology landscape.
Bring in the Right Talent: Talent plays a great role in ensuring your tech investments lead to the intended ROI and results. To ensure the technologies you implement work well for specific use cases, it is important to bring in the right people on board who can enable well-structured skill development, and training and drive high levels of employee engagement.
Don’t Ignore Governance: With modern technology comes great responsibility, so make sure you set up necessary governance policies. Agree on which teams or which partners will have decision-making authority regarding technology investments and build a governance structure that aligns with the high-level plan. Also, track KPIs as you go along the tech adoption journey to identify and bridge bottlenecks in time.
Build a Strong Partner Ecosystem: Successful tech implementations are never a one-man show. They are the combined efforts of several partners, vendors, and suppliers who constantly work towards a common goal of driving value through technology. Building a strong partner ecosystem of cloud vendors, specialist partners, system integrators, and consulting partners is a great way to get the support and guidance you need to flourish on your tech journey.

As software product companies look to improve their cybersecurity posture, optimize operations and costs, facilitate digital experiences for customers and enable remote working at scale, they need to consider strategy considerations and solution levers to achieve the desired outcomes.

Whether you want to make incremental changes to your tech infrastructure or drive major transformations, Synoptek can help you leverage technology as a strategic differentiator and help guide you to success. Contact us today!

BlogThe Importance of Strengthening Your Business Technology Infrastructure

Keeping up with the market and ensuring a competitive edge requires organizations to not just embrace new technology but also continuously optimize it. In today’s world, strengthening business technology infrastructure not only aids in the smooth functioning of the business, but can also improve overall collaboration, efficiency, and performance of business operations – that ultimately improves profitability.

However, how can organizations successfully do this without causing any disruption to the status quo? What weak spots do they have to be mindful of? Keep reading to learn more about the importance of strengthening your business technology infrastructure.

Bringing Your Business Technology Infrastructure Up to Date

Today’s ever-changing business environment presents a slew of new challenges on an almost constant basis. Therefore, your IT infrastructure’s ability to smoothly contend with these unavoidable shifts is absolutely critical. Bringing your business technology infrastructure up to speed can help circumvent an assortment of potential pitfalls while mitigating risk and eliminating possible cost liabilities.

Creating a stable IT infrastructure is critical for various reasons: right from improving employee and customer morale and experience to safeguarding the business against security attacks and reducing downtime due to unstable environments. It is only when the underlying foundation of your business is strong that you can work better and faster and drive your business to the future.

By constantly evaluating the technology tools and systems your business relies on, you can identify components of your infrastructure that are not functioning to their highest capability. Such insight can aid you in engineering the appropriate fixes, so your investment in technology is paying the greatest dividends it possibly can, and your business is set up for continued success.

Where Your Business Technology Infrastructure Weak Spots Lie

The pace of technology implementation creates unique and critical business challenges; unless properly managed, they can lead to several operational and security issues. Although most enterprises today understand the need for closely aligning business technology with overall corporate strategies and goals, several weak spots are ignored. Here’s where your business technology infrastructure weak spots lie:

1. Security

Security loopholes are probably the biggest threat to modern businesses, which – when not addressed – can lead to catastrophic outcomes. As technology becomes more sophisticated, hacking tactics also grow stronger and become more dangerous. Safeguarding the security aspects of your business technology infrastructure is important to minimize the probability and impact of modern-day threats while allowing you to act on appropriate risk mitigation strategies. Make sure to invest in tools that constantly analyze your business infrastructure to identify weak spots, track threats as they emerge, and prevent future breaches from happening. Implement advanced firewalls and endpoint protection tools and have robust access control mechanisms in place to prevent security from being the Achilles heel for your business.

2. User Experience

Ensuring a seamless and consistent user experience is critical to achieving maximum ROI as well as providing the best services to your customers. But old-school, difficult-to-use legacy systems wreak havoc on employee experience. Not only do they present an outdated UI, but they also drain productivity down while acting as a big hurdle in the accomplishment of business goals. Strengthening the technology foundation of your business via modern systems translates directly into great employee productivity and morale, ensuring quicker accomplishment of goals, and thus better revenue and profit.

3. Compliance

Another weak spot that is likely to be present in your current business technology infrastructure is compliance. As government and industry regulations get increasingly stringent, the pressure on organizations to meet an evolving set of requirements is extremely high. Since non-compliance can lead to several losses in terms of lost revenue, lost customers, and lost reputation, standards of safety, transparency, and security need to be constantly met. A robust business technology infrastructure can help keep up with evolving compliance requirements while ensuring world-class security and integrity – putting your business above competitors. For instance, emerging technologies like AI and automation can help bypass manual, error-prone, and less-than-productive compliance processes, and improve the accuracy of fraud detection, anti-money laundering, and KYC efforts.

4. Business Continuity

The pandemic has proved the importance of business continuity, which is only possible if you have a robust disaster recovery strategy in place. Since security breaches, technical malfunctions, and other IT outages can lead to serious consequences, it is crucial to safeguard the business against data loss, lost profits, frustrated customers, and damaged reputation. Updating your disaster recovery strategy and investing in cloud tools that allow for continuous and seamless failover are critical to minimizing or completely preventing these problems. By improving information flow, data analytics, and data security, these tools can help you in remaining operational, bringing your business back on track after a disaster strikes, and maintaining the status quo.

Keep Your Business Technology Infrastructure Robust and Running

Over the last couple of years, cybersecurity concerns have steadily grown as hackers are getting increasingly smart. At the same time, competition has become extremely intense, and customers’ demands are constantly evolving. Overcoming these challenges while simultaneously capitalizing on emerging opportunities requires organizations to safeguard and strengthen their business technology infrastructure.

Opting for a full spectrum of enterprise IT infrastructure optimization services is a great way to keep your business technology infrastructure reliable with ongoing administration, 24×7 monitoring, and well-defined service level guarantees. Such services can ensure continuous optimization of your IT infrastructure, enhanced agility and stability across your enterprise environment, and minimized service disruptions.

Identify and fill weak spots in your business technology infrastructure before it’s too late!

Case StudyITaaS Enables a Diagnostic Imaging Services Company Modernize Systems, Enhance Operational Efficiency, and Improve Quality of Radiology Services

Customer: A diagnostic imaging services company	Profile: Since 1977, the diagnostic imaging services company has upheld a longstanding tradition of quality care in the provision of essential diagnostic imaging services promoting health, expert care, and superior imaging services through leading edge technology.
Industry: Medical Practice
Services: ITaaS Suite

Business Need

As one of the leaders in the growing radiology industry, the imaging company partners with primary care physicians and hospitals to provide radiology services to both physicians and patients. However, with their current IT ecosystem, the imaging company was finding it difficult to:

Keep up and take advantage of emerging technology trends and opportunities
Bring IT projects to successful closure due to lack of project expertise and limited resources
Share resources across projects to reduce costs and improve lead times
Ensure alignment between IT and business units due to communication gaps

In their ambition to leverage IT to be a business differentiator and provide a platform that continues to create optimum user experience, the imaging company initiated an IT transformation initiative to assess and transform their IT processes and infrastructure into a strategic enabler of operational and growth goals and objectives. The key objectives of this transformation included:

Enabling a culture of keeping up with and implementing evolving technologies
Ensuring the right IT people, processes, and systems are in place to enable the strategic and tactical goals and objectives of the business
Improving the delivery and implementation of major technology projects

The imaging company also wanted to improve the scalability, maturity, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, workflows, and end-user satisfaction while providing the best experience for their radiologists, employees, and clients. They wanted to establish “HyperCare” customer service levels, implement ITIL processes, automate workflows, and derive the benefits of an outsourced IT model. To meet these requirements, the company got in touch with Synoptek as their preferred IT Managed Services provider.

Solution and Approach

Synoptek took over the management of the imaging company’s current IT team and put professional services in place to effectively manage project execution while maintaining high service levels. Leveraging standard ITIL processes and automation, we helped the company streamline routine IT support and operations and supplemented their IT staff with technology expertise to enable project-focused execution and effective problem resolution.

To minimize the timeline associated with cloud migration, keep changes to the overall production environment to a minimum, reduce risk, and increase the likelihood of a successful migration, Synoptek took a three-phase migration approach that included: lifting and shifting of production environment, deployment of private cloud, and carry out cloud-based migration.

Given Synoptek’s experience and expertise in managing enterprise-wide IT projects, and leveraging our global delivery model, we provided the following IT operations outsourcing services for the imaging company:

First and second level end user support including asset management, setup, installation, patching, and security of desktops, laptops, and mobile devices
Application support for Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint, and Database Management
Server support including server administration, configuration, patching, anti-virus, and user and backup management
Site support including remote workstation, network equipment, circuit, and phone support for 40 locations
Complete systems monitoring and automation solution Synoptek Edge
24×7 fully-staffed Service Desk

Our ITaaS offering included:

Employee Services

24x7x365 Technical Support
Mobile and Desktop Device Management
New Employee Provisioning
Email and Active Directory provisioning
VIP IT Concierge
Endpoint Security
Email Security
Antivirus Scanning
Advanced Threat Protection
Data Loss Prevention and Content Filtering
Spam and Phishing Detection
Email Continuity
Web Content Filtering

Server Services

Server Performance and Availability
Application Management
Managed Antivirus
Managed Hypervisor
Backup Management
File Restore Testing
Storage Area Network Management

Site Services

Router, Firewall, and Switch Management
Circuit and VPN Management

Universal Services

IT Audit and Documentation
IT Vendor Escalation
Onsite Support
Hardware, Software, License and Warranty Procurement
Patch Management
Change Management

Business Results

Under Synoptek’s guidance and support, the imaging company has been able to:

Consolidate data from multiple systems to enable better business and operational decision-making
Leverage emerging technologies to differentiate services and adapt to a shifting business landscape
Improve operational efficiency through the modernization of existing systems
Accelerate IT service improvements to address the growing needs of HR, Payroll, Finance, and Operations
Maximize revenue while driving costs down
Focus on their core business of providing quality radiology services – without worrying about managing or monitoring the underlying IT infrastructure
Make the most of a dedicated HyperCare phone number and email, that places all calls and emails in a priority status within the current queue

BlogHow to Drive a Successful IT Infrastructure Optimization

IT infrastructure has been the lifeblood of organizations since the beginning. Despite its significance in business success, IT infrastructure has long been viewed as a cost center. For this very reason, many organizations continue to operate with their monolithic, old-fashioned IT systems, not realizing the impact they have on operations and efficiency. This is especially true for organizations that experience exponential growth but fail to keep up with the demands due to their constrained systems.

The Significance of IT Infrastructure Optimization

No matter how big or small a business is, IT Infrastructure should support growth and be a strategic asset. But old-fashioned legacy systems not only bring efficiency down; they also cost a lot of money, are extremely prone to risk, and are poor at driving business agility. IT infrastructure optimization can help prevent wasted resources while increasing the speed and pace of business performance. It can help in:

Eliminating business silos and maximizing ROI and revenue
Streamlining processes and improving interoperability
Improving scalability and enhancing security
Boosting productivity and fostering agility
Reducing outages, failure, and downtime
Improve system manageability and lower maintenance costs

Top Tips to Driving a Successful IT Infrastructure Optimization

To optimize infrastructure, organizations must have a thorough understanding of their existing IT landscape, be aware of current weaknesses, and determine areas where optimization is most necessary. Here are 5 tips on how to drive a successful IT infrastructure optimization:

1. Build Strong Connection between Business and IT Teams

Given the fact that technology enables modern businesses, a strong connection between business and IT teams is necessary to ensure that technology solutions perfectly solve business challenges faced across different departmental objectives, cultures, and incentives. Such alignment can ensure technology works in tandem with the strategy, mission, and goals of the organization while also reflecting other priorities such as innovation. It can also help overcome common bottlenecks that hinder IT performance, increase enterprise-wide collaboration, enhance speed-to-market, and improve returns from IT investment.

2. Move Away from Legacy Systems

Legacy systems, although an integral part of day-to-day business functioning, are also performance and cost-draining. If you want to optimize your IT infrastructure, you need to look at ways you can move away from these time, cost, and resource-intensive systems: from re-architecting the system, to re-platforming, re-hosting, or completely redesigning them in a way that it meets technical, operational, and business requirements. You can also embrace a microservices-based architecture to easily and quickly implement new features and changes and ensure your IT systems keep up with the functionality, scalability, availability, and security requirements of a modern world.

3. Enable Automation

Mundane IT operations, when done manually, cost a lot in terms of time and effort that is put by highly qualified resources in carrying out simple, administrative tasks. Embracing automation can help free up these critical resources while simultaneously minimizing human error and allowing smoother delivery of services. Automation can allow complex IT ecosystems and operations to be managed more efficiently and effectively and allow expert resources to focus on aspects of the business that need radical and strategic thinking. Automation can also greatly bring down the time spent on managing complex infrastructure while also increasing overall uptime and reliability.

4. Embrace the Cloud

Organizations that continue to rely on traditional, on-premises data centers can achieve a lot by embracing the cloud. As demand grows, cloud can help keep pace with business goals while also allowing the business to be extremely scalable and flexible with new trends and changes. Since cloud offers several benefits across availability of resources, flexibility of deployments, and security of systems, it helps in more efficient and cost-effective use of IT resources. It also brings CapEx down to zero, allowing organizations to only pay for what they use and achieve better ROI – while rooting out redundancies that come from wasted resources.

5. Implement Predictive and Preventive Analytics

Given how complex IT ecosystems have now become, performance issues are given. It depends on how quickly and efficiently an organization can deal with these challenges that makes all the difference. Implementing predictive and preventive analysis is a great way to optimize IT infrastructure. Through constant real-time monitoring of networks, systems, and end-user devices, analytics can help identify current and potential future issues, allowing IT teams to take the necessary action to curtail their impact. When paired with AI, they can also automatically rectify minor issues – without requiring qualified experts to address the issue at hand.

Take Your IT Infrastructure Optimization to the Next Level

In today’s constantly evolving business and IT landscape, IT infrastructure optimization delivers a bevy of benefits across enhanced performance, improved productivity, and better integration. If you want to drive successful optimization, building a strong connection between your business and IT teams, moving away from legacy systems, enabling automation, embracing the cloud, and implementing analytics are some ways to drive the required results. But instead of doing all these on your own, you can partner with a Managed Services Provider like Synoptek who can help you maintain various infrastructure components using scalable resources and expertise.

A Managed Services Provider can not only offer the right consultancy services to manage your IT infrastructure, they can also provide the resources you need to deal with common IT challenges while freeing up internal IT resources for strategic initiatives. They can help you in cost-optimizing your infrastructure, strike the right balance between cost and performance, and maximize the value of your IT assets – bringing added value to your organization.

BlogInfrastructure as a Service: What is it and Why it Matters

That IT has become the crux of successful businesses is known to all; unfortunately, many struggles with establishing a robust foundation of the right servers, storage, and networks – often hindering the pace and precision with which they can survive and thrive. Because many organizations mostly rely on a suite of old-fashioned systems and technologies, they also find it extremely challenging to scale their environments quickly and meet new and increased demands. Managing these evolving systems is also a Herculean task, requiring substantial cost and expertise to ensure they operate 24×7 – without interruption.

This throws the spotlight on Infrastructure as a Service that empowers these organizations to leverage the best and most modern IT infrastructure components to run their businesses – without having to manage or support them – thus focusing on their core operations and not worrying about the infrastructure that powers them.

Infrastructure as a Service Explained

Gartner defines Infrastructure as a Service as “a standardized, highly automated offering in which computing resources owned by a service provider, complemented by storage and networking capabilities, are offered to customers on demand”. It delivers the full compute stack to organizations over the Internet, allowing them to consume just what they need while freeing from complex and expensive administrative tasks.

Because it enables organizations to scale (and shrink) resources as and when needed, it eliminates the need for high, upfront capital expenditures – thus greatly cutting costs and delivering the kind of flexibility needed to accommodate the growing demand for service. It also allows organizations to streamline their existing infrastructure while having access to needed resources to run their business efficiently.

The Numerous Benefits

Keeping up with the pace of digital transformation, competitive pressures, and evolving customer demands means organizations must constantly work towards developing and delivering robust IT services. As an assortment of physical and virtualized resources, Infrastructure as a Service provides organizations with the basic building blocks required to operate applications and workloads as per current trends. Analysts expect the Infrastructure as a Service market to be worth $202.50 billion by 2027. The benefits it offers are numerous:

1. Seamless Scalability: One of the biggest benefits of Infrastructure as a Service is the ability to scale computing resources on the fly. This means whenever there is an increase in demand, organizations can seamlessly scale their organizations – and ensure consistent performance of workloads and applications.

2. Greater Reliability: The on-demand service model makes it extremely easy for organizations to have access to the resources they need, when they need them. Because IT resources are constantly updated and always available, organizations can be sure to have access to modern compute capabilities needed to efficiently run their business.

3. Minimized CapEx: Unlike traditional on-premise IT infrastructures that require substantial upfront investments in terms of license costs, implementation costs, and support and maintenance, Infrastructure as a Service minimizes (or even completely eliminates) CapEx. Organizations have to pay for the IT resources they use, thus optimizing overall costs.

4. Enhanced Security: Modern Infrastructure as a Service providers constantly invest in state-of-the-art security postures and integrate them into the core of their business models. Organizations can be assured of having encrypted access to compute resources that are constantly updated as per the latest security and compliance regulations.

5. Business Focus: Infrastructure as a Service also helps in eliminating the need for constant monitoring and management of the underlying IT infrastructure. This means organizations can drive all their time and energy to developing their business and not worrying about upgrading their systems, implementing patches, or fixing issues.

Focus on Core Offering

The modern business landscape is extremely volatile; the demand for products and services are extremely erratic. Yet, organizations are expected to constantly keep an eye on changing needs and provide value in an accelerated, efficient, and cost-effective manner. Infrastructure as a Service empowers organizations with the storage, networking, and operating capabilities needed to run their businesses and deliver cutting-edge services to customers. By providing access to secure and reliable on-demand resources on a pay-as-you-go model, it allows organizations to minimize CapEx and scale as needed while driving all their focus on their core business offering.

BlogHow Startups Can Leverage Elastic Services for Cost Optimization

Due to COVID-19, business continuity has been put to the test for many companies in the manufacturing, agriculture, transport, hospitality, energy, and retail sectors. Cost reduction is the primary focus of companies in these sectors due to massive losses in revenue caused by this pandemic. The other side of the crisis is, however, significantly different.

Companies in industries such as medical, government and financial services, as well as cloud-native tech startups that are providing essential services, have experienced a considerable increase in their operational demands — leading to rising operational costs. Irrespective of the industry your company belongs to, and whether your company is experiencing reduced or increased operations, cost optimization is a reality for all companies to ensure a sustained existence.

One of the most reliable measures for cost optimization at this stage is to leverage elastic services designed to grow or shrink according to demand, such as Infra. A modern product with a cloudnative architecture can auto-scale cloud consumption to mitigate lost operational demand. What may not have been obvious to startup leaders is a strategy often employed by the incumbent, mature enterprises — achieving cost optimization by leveraging managed services providers (MSPs). MSPs enable organizations to repurpose full-time staff members from impacted operations to more strategic product lines or initiatives.

Why companies need cost optimization in the long run

One truth that has emerged from the impact of the current pandemic is that several organizations (large and small) are not well-positioned to leverage elastic services to mitigate the operational, financial and other risks caused by unanticipated changes in the business landscape. In the absence of an enterprise ecosystem that is agile, elastic, and mobile, they are exposed to risks caused by:

An unanticipated disruption in business continuity
Loss of business or revenues

To safeguard themselves, should another crisis strike, companies must start planning now. Partnering with a seasoned MSP to plan and leverage the consumption and subscription services is pragmatic so that they can instantaneously adjust expenditures that are irrelevant in the current scenario and can prepare for long-term cost reduction.

How to optimize costs with elastic services

One clear observation that has emerged due to the impact of the current crisis on businesses is that investment toward IT strategy and planning services pays in good times, as well as difficult times. Therefore, companies, whether they are currently making profits or experiencing losses, should consider long-term investment toward IT strategy and planning services and carefully plan the “new normal” costs required to scale demand and revenue.

Elastic cloud and managed services can help these companies balance the rapid changes in the demand and the need for expenditure:

With consumption services, companies can choose to pay only for the services and resources they use. Many MSPs are evolving to cloud service providers (CSPs), leveraging the same consumption pricing and services as the hyperscale clouds.
With subscription services, companies can choose flexible payment models that often afford advantageous pricing the longer one commits. Select the time frame that settles the risk and reward.
As several companies have stopped hiring and are trying to avoid longterm capital investments, they can meet their operational demands by contracting managed services and re-platforming their enterprise ecosystem to use cloud services.

The most efficient approach to implementing elastic services

Given the requirement and expenditure patterns for every company are different, there can never be a one-size-fits-all strategy to ensure the successful implementation of elastic services. To ensure that elastic services efficiently help optimize costs in your organization, you should follow the three-step approach outlined below:

Discover: To start with, collect the last three-years’ operational revenue and expenses for your company. If you are an early-stage startup with no predictable revenue or costs, understand your competitors’ seasonal lows and highs (these are elastic needs). Perform a business-impact-analysis (B-I-A) to recognize the critical business processes and map them to the risk scenarios that lead to business disruption. Layout the risks and then create a risk mitigation plan with your strategic IT leadership and advisors.
Analyze: Adapt your current architecture to identify your business objectives and how it has altered due to new conditions, and then carry out a gap analysis and capabilities assessment.
Plan: Based on your business objectives, review how and where you can leverage elastic services to fit seasonal variation better, and the risk scenarios where swiftly declining operational demand may occur.

The business landscape is evolving at a swift pace to reveal the new normal post-COVID-19. A traditional wait-and-watch response is not a wise move, especially for startups. Instead, engaging with a strategic leadership partner that can help you evaluate your current infrastructure and implement elastic services is the best move to meet your business objectives now, as well as in the long run.

This article was first published on Tech Crunch.

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