{"id":499987,"date":"2021-06-22T06:56:04","date_gmt":"2021-06-22T04:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=499987"},"modified":"2021-07-08T09:08:12","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T07:08:12","slug":"management-and-automation-in-the-smb-infrastructure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/industry-news\/499987\/management-and-automation-in-the-smb-infrastructure\/","title":{"rendered":"Management and automation in the SMB infrastructure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Traci Maynard<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Within IT, management means more than simply watching over and taking care of systems, assets, and infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>It covers the entire IT lifecycle:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Initial determination of needs and requirements<\/li>\n<li>Evaluation and selection of technologies, tools, and platforms<\/li>\n<li>Negotiating purchase and support costs<\/li>\n<li>Installation and configuration<\/li>\n<li>Upkeep and maintenance and ongoing review<\/li>\n<li>Decommissioning and proper surplus operations or outright destruction at end of life (recommended for old storage media used for sensitive data, for example).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In fact, management has been a formal IT discipline for over three decades.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/goaxiz.co.za\/technology-services\/?utm_source=Article&amp;utm_medium=BusinessTech&amp;utm_campaign=June2021\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Click here to view Axiz HPE\u2019s range of technology services.<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That\u2019s long enough for the initial management model to become outmoded and be replaced with something newer and more robust.<\/p>\n<p>The early model was sometimes called FCAPS: for fault, configuration, accounting, performance, and security, all management categories covered under that model.<\/p>\n<p>Modern IT management falls under the heading of IT Service Management (ITSM).<\/p>\n<p>These days, ITSM means understanding the IT lifecycle, and how delivering quality IT is itself a service discipline that follows an agile DevOps-inspired approach called CI\/CD\u2014continuous integration along with continuous delivery.<\/p>\n<p>In IT, automation generally refers to the use of recorded and repeatable instructions or directives that do programmatically what an IT professional does manually (by entering commands, running a user interface, using and utilities, and so forth).<\/p>\n<p>Once automated, software tools, frameworks, and appliances can handle tasks with little or no human interaction.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">How automation tools improve productivity<\/h3>\n<p>Proper use of automation tools and frameworks can help IT (and businesses of all sizes and scales, including SMBs) be more productive and responsive to users and stakeholders.<\/p>\n<p>First, automation runs much faster than human-computer interactions can.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, automation is hundreds to thousands of times faster than manual input, especially for simple, routine tasks.<\/p>\n<p>This makes proper automation especially useful for incident response because it can move as quickly to defend as an automated attack can proceed.<\/p>\n<p>Second, because automation can (and should) be tested rigorously to make sure it works without errors or issues, it\u2019s also more reliable than human input once it\u2019s put into production.<\/p>\n<p>Given access to results from analytics, cost, or performance monitoring data, automation can also take action to limit resource consumption when costs exceed a preset minimum or when resource consumption spikes.<\/p>\n<p>In general, proper use of automation helps IT (and the businesses it supports) be more productive and responsive to changes in demand or resource requirements.<\/p>\n<p>Typical uses of IT automation in SMB operations include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Monitoring networks, servers, and clients for health<\/li>\n<li>Tracking vulnerabilities and update status<\/li>\n<li>Automated deployment of patches, fixes, and updates<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Because automation helps IT do more\u2014and do things faster and more reliably\u2014it\u2019s a huge boon to SMB IT teams, which often work under tight resource constraints (especially headcount).<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Axiz HPE<\/h3>\n<p>Axiz is an HPE Distributor across Southern Africa and as such we are channel friendly working through our channel of partners\/resellers.<\/p>\n<p>Our role in the supply chain is to provide expertise and guide our partners through an offering of services, from both Axiz and HPE. Our offering of <a href=\"https:\/\/goaxiz.co.za\/technology-services\/?utm_source=Article&amp;utm_medium=BusinessTech&amp;utm_campaign=June2021\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>technology services<\/strong><\/a> is available for our partners to consume.<\/p>\n<p>Axiz has built up a strong implementation capability taking advantage of our pool of certified experts and our strong vendor relationships.<\/p>\n<p>The Axiz team of HPE certified experts are ready and on standby to help with your technology choices.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; margin-top: 20px;\" src=\"https:\/\/leads.mybroadband.co.za\/axiz-hpe-end-users\/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"570px\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Proper use of automation tools and frameworks can help IT be more productive and responsive to users and stakeholders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":499991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10459],"tags":[15883],"class_list":["post-499987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-axiz-hpe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499987"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504243,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499987\/revisions\/504243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}