The Coronavirus Pandemic: Zero hour for IT modernization.

The Coronavirus Pandemic: Zero hour for IT modernization.

Readiness. It seems it’s all anyone can talk about lately. “Are we prepared for the next big thing?” “How will we respond?” “Do we have the agility to quickly adapt to new circumstances?”

Those new circumstances are here. While data center professionals spend a lot of time preparing for day-to-day business, preparing for the future and even irregular events, not many have planned for global crises like what we are currently facing.

The covid-19 pandemic is sending people in charge of mission-critical operations and facilities into uncharted territory.

Day to day activities are being disrupted at a magnitude we haven’t seen in recent history. As a result, there is more dependency on digital solutions to accomplish what analog solutions normally could. With people sheltering in place, more communication is happening digitally. And with more people working from home and students learning from home there is more online activity.

All this means greater network usage and more stress on IT infrastructure.

Here’s what can be done to ensure IT does its part during this pandemic:

• Find and triage your vulnerabilities
  • Scan your environment for vulnerabilities and then triage them by severity
  • Assess the complexity of the remediation solutions, so you can manage operational time better
• Take inventory and manage your assets
  • Report in detail on compute, storage and network capacity, so you can allocate resources, plan budgets and execute purchasing
  • Identify mis-sized virtual machines in the cloud, giving you the information you need to right-size those VMs
• Free up space and expenses
  • Address servers that are not in production, but still running – both on premises and in the cloud.
    • If it’s a virtual machine in the cloud, you could be paying for that while it’s not even being used.
    • If on premises, it may be a server that’s under maintenance and unnecessarily using resources.
  • Complete reports on operating software versions and licenses currently in use to allow for upgrades, renewals and optimization to right-size your licensing needs

Keep it simple.

In addition to the above high-tech solutions, you can always do your part to flatten the curve with these common-sense low-tech solutions:

• Wash your hands frequently.
• Avoid touching your face.
• Watch out for symptoms: cough, fever, shortness of breath.
• Cough and sneeze into your elbow.
• Clean and disinfect your home or work space regularly.

Most experts say that the coronavirus is here to stay, and that life after the curve flattens will be a new normal. The sooner your IT environment is running efficiently with no excess load or stress, the more successfully you can endure the crisis and the more equipped you will be to thrive in the new normal.

Learn more about how you can transform your IT environment in preparation for any global crises.