3 Common Mistakes Businesses Make When Updating IT Infrastructure

Even for technically savvy companies and organizations, the process of updating previously outdated tech can easily spiral into an overly complicated and expensive ordeal.

Technology stacks can be broken, new equipment installed and deployed improperly, best practices skipped or outright ignored.

From our experience, there are three common mistakes many companies make when modernizing their data center. These IT infrastructure mistakes can be easily avoided by:

1. Asking the right questions from the beginning to understand workloads
2. Methodically plotting out a course of action instead of doing everything at once
3. Partnering with modernization experts rather than figuring it out yourself

Click here to read the complete guide on modernizing your datacenter.

Let's break down each mistake and explain how you can avoid them.

1. Failure to understand workloads

When starting out with modernization, it’s often tempting for companies to hone in on things like spec configuration and storage needs.

While these are indeed important steps to focus on eventually, the first step your company should take is to complete a holistic assessment of where your infrastructure currently stands.

That means asking questions like:

• What, exactly, are the company’s needs?
• What is already working in its process and what could be improved?
• What is the company trying to achieve through modernization — not just in the short term but into the future?

Without asking these questions, a company won’t have a proper understanding of its workloads and the effectiveness of its current tools. This puts the cart before the horse, and the result is often a tortured process, along with major disruptions in productivity.

2. Trying to do too much at once

Overhauling your infrastructure is a marathon, not a sprint.

Companies that focus on making big leaps in technical maturity instead of incremental and iterative improvements often find themselves overwhelmed by the modernization process.

New tools and workflows take time to master, after all. New technologies must be thoroughly tested before deployment. Employees need to be properly trained.

Rather than trying to make a big technological leap forward, you must pay particular attention to what you’re realistically trying to achieve. You should then take a hard look at your current infrastructure and pinpoint where you can iterate and where you should move forward with new technology.

Successful modernization doesn’t mean overhauling everything all at once. Instead, it requires marrying what already works with what will work in the future, as you continue to grow and scale. In other words, it’s about having the right infrastructure in place to leverage advances in technology without abandoning what is effective.

3. Going the DIY route

Companies that believe they have the tools and experience in-house to modernize their infrastructure often learn that the do-it-yourself (DIY) route can be far more complicated — and expensive — than anticipated.

Simple mistakes can often snowball into costly errors, which is why we recommend partnering with experts from the outset. That way, best practices can be put in place from the beginning, and mistakes easily avoided.

While DIY solutions may seem cheaper at first, plunging into infrastructure modernization without the proper knowledge and expertise has a high chance of costing far more than partnering with the right professionals from the beginning.

At Redapt, we strongly believe in helping companies fully assess their data infrastructure needs before moving forward with modernization. That way, we can ensure a company has the right equipment, software, and storage solutions to be successful. We can also help a company make modernizing its data infrastructure as painless as possible.

To learn more about how Redapt can help your company smartly invest in its data infrastructure, reach out and contact us today. You can also download our eBook: Unlocking the Potential of Modern Datacenters: Five Good Reasons Companies Should Invest in Their Data Infrastructure.